Herbranson Walter T, Fremouw Thane, Shimp Charles P
Whitman College, USA.
J Exp Anal Behav. 2002 Nov;78(3):249-70. doi: 10.1901/jeab.2002.78-249.
Pigeons categorized a moving target in terms of its speed and direction in an adaptation of the randomization procedure used to study human categorization behavior (Ashby & Maddox, 1998). The target moved according to vectors that were sampled with equal probabilities from two slightly overlapping bivariate normal distributions with the dimensions of speed and direction. On the average, pigeons categorized optimally in that they attended to either speed or direction alone, or divided attention between them, as was required by different reinforcement contingencies. Decision bounds were estimated for individual pigeons for each attentional task. Average slopes and y intercepts of these individually estimated decision bounds closely approximated the corresponding values for optimal decision bounds. There is therefore at least one task in which pigeons, on the average, display flexibility and quantitative precision in allocating attention to speed and direction when they categorize moving targets.
在一项对用于研究人类分类行为的随机化程序的改编实验中，鸽子根据移动目标的速度和方向对其进行分类（阿什比和马多克斯，1998）。目标按照从两个略有重叠的双变量正态分布中以相等概率采样的向量移动，其维度为速度和方向。平均而言，鸽子的分类表现最佳，因为它们会根据不同的强化条件，单独关注速度或方向，或者在两者之间分配注意力。针对每个注意力任务，为个体鸽子估计了决策边界。这些单独估计的决策边界的平均斜率和y轴截距与最优决策边界的相应值非常接近。因此，至少有一项任务中，鸽子在对移动目标进行分类时，平均而言在分配对速度和方向的注意力方面表现出灵活性和定量精度。
