Tommasi L, Vallortigara G
Department of General Psychology, University of Padua, Italy.
J Exp Psychol Anim Behav Process. 2000 Oct;26(4):477-86. doi: 10.1037//0097-7403.26.4.477.
Chicks learned to find food hidden under sawdust by ground-scratching in the central position of the floor of a closed arena. When tested inan arena of identical shape but a larger area, chicks searched at 2 different locations, one corresponding to the correct distance (i.e., center) in the smaller (training) arena and the other to the actual center of the test arena. When tested in an arena of the same shape but a smaller area, chicks searched in the center of it. These results suggest that chicks are able to encode information on the absolute and relative distance of the food from the walls of the arena. After training in the presence of a landmark located at the center of the arena, animals searched at the center even after the removal of the landmark. Marked changes in the height of the walls of the arena produced some displacement in searching behavior, suggesting that chicks used the angular size of the walls to estimate distances.
小鸡通过在封闭场地地面的中心位置刨地，学会了找到藏在锯末下的食物。当在形状相同但面积更大的场地进行测试时，小鸡会在两个不同的位置进行搜索，一个对应于较小（训练）场地中的正确距离（即中心），另一个对应于测试场地的实际中心。当在形状相同但面积较小的场地进行测试时，小鸡会在场地中心进行搜索。这些结果表明，小鸡能够编码关于食物与场地墙壁的绝对和相对距离的信息。在场地中心有一个地标存在的情况下进行训练后，即使地标被移除，动物仍会在中心进行搜索。场地墙壁高度的显著变化在搜索行为上产生了一些位移，这表明小鸡利用墙壁的角度大小来估计距离。
