Castro Leyre, Lazareva Olga F, Vecera Shaun P, Wasserman Edward A
E11 Seashore Hall, Department of Psychology, The University of Iowa, United States.
Vision Res. 2010 Mar 5;50(5):497-508. doi: 10.1016/j.visres.2009.12.016. Epub 2010 Jan 8.
A critical cue for figure-ground assignment in humans is area: smaller regions are more likely to be perceived as figures than are larger regions. To see if pigeons are similarly sensitive to this cue, we trained birds to report whether a target appeared on a colored figure or on a differently colored background. The initial training figure was either smaller than (Experiments 1 and 2) or the same area as (Experiment 2) the background. After training, we increased or decreased the size of the figure. When the original training shape was smaller than the background, pigeons' performance improved with smaller figures (and worsened with larger figures); when the original training shape was the same area as the background, pigeons' performance worsened when they were tested with smaller figures. A smaller figural region appeared to improve the figure-ground discrimination only when size was a relevant cue in the initial discrimination.
人类进行图形-背景区分的一个关键线索是面积：较小的区域比较大的区域更有可能被视为图形。为了探究鸽子是否对这一线索同样敏感，我们训练鸽子报告目标是出现在彩色图形上还是出现在颜色不同的背景上。最初的训练图形要么比背景小（实验1和2），要么与背景面积相同（实验2）。训练后，我们增大或减小图形的尺寸。当最初的训练形状比背景小时，图形尺寸变小时鸽子的表现会提高（图形尺寸变大时表现会变差）；当最初的训练形状与背景面积相同时，用较小图形进行测试时鸽子的表现会变差。只有当尺寸在最初的区分中是一个相关线索时，较小的图形区域似乎才会提高图形-背景辨别能力。
