Pigeons’ categorization may be exclusively nonanalytic

• Published in: Psychonomic bulletin & review Vol. 18; no. 2; pp. 414 - 421
• Main Authors: Smith, J. David, Ashby, F. Gregory, Berg, Mark E., Murphy, Matthew S., Spiering, Brian, Cook, Robert G., Grace, Randolph C.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer-Verlag 01.04.2011; Springer; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Animal; Animals; Behavioral Science and Psychology; Biological and medical sciences; Cognition; Cognitive Psychology; Columbidae; Concept Formation; Discrimination Learning; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Learning; Learning. Memory; Monkeys & apes; Neural networks; Pattern Recognition, Visual; Photic Stimulation; Psychology; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Studies; Vertebrates; Comparative cognition; Category learning; Rules; Analytic/nonanalytic cognition; Implicit/explicit cognition; Pigeons; Cognition; Experimental study; Pigeon; Learning; Vertebrata; Acquisition process; Animal; Rule; Aves; Categorization
• DOI: 10.3758/s13423-010-0047-8
• ISSN: 1069-9384

Recent theoretical and empirical developments in human category learning have differentiated an analytic, rule-based system of category learning from a nonanalytic system that integrates information across stimulus dimensions. In the present study, the researchers applied this theoretical distinction to pigeons’ category learning. Pigeons learned to categorize stimuli varying in the tilt and width of their internal striping. The matched category problems had either a unidimensional (rule-based) or multidimensional (information-integration) solution. Whereas humans and nonhuman primates strongly dimensionalize these stimuli and learn rule-based tasks far more quickly than information-integration tasks, pigeons learned the two tasks equally quickly to the same accuracy level. Pigeons may represent a cognitive system in which the commitment to dimensional analysis and category rules was not strongly made. Their performance could suggest the character of the ancestral vertebrate categorization system from which that of primates emerged.