Vallortigara G, Zanforlin M, Pasti G
Dipartimento di Psicologia Generale, Università di Padova, Padua, Italy.
J Comp Psychol. 1990 Sep;104(3):248-54. doi: 10.1037/0735-7036.104.3.248.
Recent work has shown that in place-finding tasks rats rely on the geometric relations between the goal object and the shape of the environment. We tested young chickens (Gallus gallus domesticus) on similar tasks in a reference memory paradigm to determine whether differences exist between species in the ability to use geometric and nongeometric spatial information. The main findings were that chicks: (a) encoded and used both geometric and nongeometric (featural) information; (b) did not use the overall spatial arrangement of the features; (c) relied primarily on nongeometric cues when faced with contradictory information. Two mechanisms are evident in chicks' spatial representations: a metric frame for encoding the spatial arrangement of surfaces as surfaces and a cue-guidance system for encoding conspicuous landmarks near the target. The possibility of hierarchical organization and species differences in these two mechanisms are discussed.
近期的研究表明，在寻路任务中，大鼠依靠目标物体与环境形状之间的几何关系。我们在参考记忆范式下，对幼鸡（家鸡）进行了类似任务的测试，以确定不同物种在使用几何和非几何空间信息的能力上是否存在差异。主要研究结果如下：幼鸡：（a）编码并使用了几何和非几何（特征）信息；（b）未使用特征的整体空间布局；（c）面对矛盾信息时主要依赖非几何线索。在幼鸡的空间表征中，有两种机制很明显：一种是将表面的空间布局编码为表面的度量框架，另一种是用于编码目标附近显著地标的线索引导系统。本文还讨论了这两种机制中层次组织和物种差异的可能性。
