Brooks Daniel I, Wasserman Edward A
Department of Psychology, Iowa City, IA 52242, USA.
J Exp Psychol Anim Behav Process. 2010 Jan;36(1):158-63. doi: 10.1037/a0016151.
Same/different discrimination is a classic task for investigating relational learning in animals. Recent research suggests that pigeons can learn a trial-unique same/different discrimination, which eliminates the opportunity to memorize the training items (Brooks & Wasserman, 2008). The authors conducted three tests to elucidate the role that item-based comparison plays in this trial-unique discrimination. In the first, the authors tested the possibility that pigeons' same/different discrimination was based on textural features of the displays by creating a single, unitary texture from same and different displays; pigeons failed to discriminate these unitary textural displays. In the second, the authors varied the number of items (mosaics) in the display and the authors reproduced the characteristic decline in performance associated with fewer items. In the third, the authors systematically increased the area of two mosaics to closely match the area occupied by increasing numbers of mosaics; the results obtained with two small items persisted even when the size of the mosaics was increased. These results clearly show that pigeons' same/different discrimination was based on object-level variability and not on other properties of the displays.
相同/不同辨别是研究动物关系学习的一项经典任务。近期研究表明，鸽子能够学会一种每次试验独特的相同/不同辨别任务，这消除了记忆训练项目的机会（布鲁克斯和瓦瑟曼，2008年）。作者进行了三项测试，以阐明基于项目的比较在这种每次试验独特的辨别中所起的作用。在第一项测试中，作者通过从相同和不同的展示中创建单一、统一的纹理，来测试鸽子的相同/不同辨别是否基于展示的纹理特征；鸽子无法辨别这些统一的纹理展示。在第二项测试中，作者改变了展示中项目（镶嵌图案）的数量，并且作者重现了与项目数量减少相关的典型性能下降。在第三项测试中，作者系统地增加了两个镶嵌图案的面积，使其与数量增加的镶嵌图案所占据的面积紧密匹配；即使镶嵌图案的尺寸增加，用两个小项目获得的结果仍然存在。这些结果清楚地表明，鸽子的相同/不同辨别是基于物体层面的可变性，而不是基于展示的其他属性。
