Walsh Stephanie J, Skinner Darlene M, Martin Gerard M
Department of Psychology, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John's.
Can J Exp Psychol. 2007 Mar;61(1):44-53. doi: 10.1037/cjep2007005.
We examined the capacity of harp seals (Pagophilus groenlandicus) to use spatial context (i.e., their tank) as a conditional cue to solve a two-choice visual discrimination reversal task. Seals were trained to touch one of two 3D objects. Two of four seals experienced a context shift that coincided with each of five reversals in the reward value of the two stimuli (i.e., a reversal of S+ and S-); these seals solved the six discriminations in significantly fewer trials than did seals that did not experience a context shift with the contingency reversal. Thus, harp seals use contextual cues when encoding information. The findings are discussed in terms of harp seals' adaptations to the pack-ice environment, the constraints of the learning tasks, and the nature of the subjects that were raised in captivity.
我们研究了竖琴海豹（Pagophilus groenlandicus）利用空间环境（即它们的水池）作为条件线索来解决二选一视觉辨别反转任务的能力。海豹被训练去触摸两个三维物体中的一个。四只海豹中有两只经历了环境变化，这与两种刺激奖励值的五次反转中的每一次同时发生（即S+和S-的反转）；与没有经历与偶然性反转相关的环境变化的海豹相比，这些海豹在显著更少的试验次数中解决了这六种辨别。因此，竖琴海豹在编码信息时会利用环境线索。我们从竖琴海豹对浮冰环境的适应、学习任务的限制以及圈养饲养的动物的性质等方面对这些发现进行了讨论。
