Herbranson Walter T, Shimp Charles P
Whitman College, Walla Walla, Washington, USA.
Learn Behav. 2003 Feb;31(1):98-106. doi: 10.3758/bf03195973.
An avian analogue to human artificial or synthetic grammar learning (Reber, 1967) was developed. Pigeons viewed horizontal strings of three to eight colored letters. These strings either conformed to Reber's artificial grammar or violated it in one or two locations. Pigeons categorized the letter strings as grammatical (left keypeck) or nongrammatical (right keypeck). Overall accuracy of categorization was above chance to both familiar training strings and to novel transfer strings, thereby satisfying a conventional criterion for learning an abstract concept. The results support a multiple mechanisms point of view according to which pigeons, like humans, learn both abstract concepts and specific strings, or specific parts of strings, in artificial grammar learning tasks.
开发了一种类似于人类人工或合成语法学习（Reber，1967）的鸟类模型。鸽子观看由三到八个彩色字母组成的水平字符串。这些字符串要么符合Reber的人工语法，要么在一两个位置违反该语法。鸽子将字母字符串分类为符合语法（左按键啄击）或不符合语法（右按键啄击）。对熟悉的训练字符串和新颖的迁移字符串进行分类的总体准确率均高于随机水平，从而满足了学习抽象概念的传统标准。结果支持了一种多重机制的观点，即鸽子与人类一样，在人工语法学习任务中既学习抽象概念，也学习特定的字符串或字符串的特定部分。
