Robert G. Cook

Concept learning by pigeons: Matching-to-sample with trial-unique video picture stimuli

Pigeons were trained to match-to-sample with several new methodologies: a large number of stimuli, computer-drawn color picture stimuli, responses monitored by a computer touch screen, stimuli presented horizontally from the floor, and grain reinforcement delivered onto the picture stimuli. Following acquisition, matching-to-sample concept learning was assessed by transfer to novel stimuli on the first exposure to pairs of novel stimuli. One group (trial-unique), trained with 152 different pictures presented once daily, showed excellent transfer (80% correct). Transfer and baseline performances were equivalent, indicating that the matching-to-sample concept had been learned. A second group (2-stimulus), trained with only two different pictures, showed no evidence of transfer. These results are discussed in terms of the effect of numbers of exemplars on previous failures to find concept learning in pigeons, and the implications of the positive finding from this experiment on abstract concept learning and evolutionary cognitive development.

Flexible Memory Processing by Rats: Use of Prospective and Retrospective Information in the Radial Maze

Four experiments investigated the content of the memory used by rats in mediating retention intervals interpolated during performance in a 12-arm radial maze. The delay occurred following either the 2nd, 4th, 6th, 8th, or 10th choice. A 15-min delay had the greatest disruptive effect when interpolated in the middle of the choice sequence and less of an effect when it occurred either earlier or later. This pattern of results was obtained when either a free- or forced-choice procedure was used prior to the delay and regardless of whether postdelay testing consisted of completion of the maze or two-alternative forced-choice tests. Assuming that the disruptive effect of a delay is a function of memory load, this implies that the rats used information about previously visited arms (retrospective memory) following an earlier interpolated delay but information about anticipated choices (prospective memory) following a delay interpolated late in the choice sequence. There appeared to be a recency effect only in the early and middle delay conditions. This provides converging evidence for the dual-code hypothesis. No evidence for prospective memory was obtained following a 60-min delay.

Spatial memory and the performance of rats and pigeons in the radial-arm maze

The resource-distribution hypothesis states that the ability of an animal to remember the spatial location of past events is related to the typical distribution of food resources for the species. It appears to predict that Norway rats would perform better than domestic pigeons in tasks requiring spatial event memory. Pigeons, tested in an eight-arm radial maze, exhibited no more than half of the memory capacity observed in rats in the same apparatus and may not have used spatial memory at all. The results were interpreted as supporting the hypothesis.

Evidence for large long-term memory capacities in baboons and pigeons and its implications for learning and the evolution of cognition

Previous research has shown that birds and primates have a rich repertoire of behavioral and cognitive skills, but the mechanisms underlying these abilities are not well understood. A common hypothesis is that these adaptations are mediated by an efficient long-term memory, allowing animals to remember specific external events and associate appropriate behaviors to these events. Because earlier studies have not sufficiently challenged memory capacity in animals, our comparative research examined with equivalent procedures the size and mechanisms of long-term memory in baboons and pigeons. Findings revealed very large, but different, capacities in both species to learn and remember picture–response associations. Pigeons could maximally memorize between 800 and 1,200 picture–response associations before reaching the limit of their performance. In contrast, baboons minimally memorized 3,500–5,000 items and had not reached their limit after more than 3 years of testing. No differences were detected in how these associations were retained or otherwise processed by these species. These results demonstrate that pigeons and monkeys have sufficient memory resources to develop memory-based exemplar or feature learning strategies in many test situations. They further suggest that the evolution of cognition and behavior importantly may have involved the gradual enlargement of the long-term memory capacities of the brain.

Pigeon Same-Different Concept Learning With Multiple Stimulus Classes

Two experiments examined the acquisition and transfer of a complex same-different discrimination by pigeons. With the use of a 2-alternative choice task, 5 pigeons were reinforced for discriminating odd-item Different displays in which a contrasting target ws present, from Same displays, in which all elements were identical. Four different types of same-different displays were concurrently tested. The display types differed in their configuration (texture vs. visual search organization), the nature of their elements (small and large colored shapes; pictures of birds, flowers, fish, and humans), and the processing demands required by their global-local element arrangement. Despite these differences, the pigeons learned to discriminate all 4 display types at the same rate and showed positive discrimination transfer to novel examples of each type, suggesting that a single generalized rule was used to discriminate all display types. These results provide some of the strongest evidence yet that pigeons, like many primates, can learn an abstract, visually mediated same-different concept.

The attractiveness to males of female Drosophila melanogaster: effects of mating, age and diet.

Decapitated females were used to examine the attractiveness to males (duration of courtship elicited) of female Drosophila melanogaster. Decapitated females show but few behavioural responses. The attractiveness of virgin females varied with age, being at a maximum on the day of eclosion, and declining thereafter. Even though decapitated inseminated females do not extrude their genitalia they received less courtship than decapitated virgin females. In protein-fed inseminated females attractiveness to males returned in parallel with sexual receptivity. A sucrose diet rendered both virgin and inseminated decapitated females more attractive to males, but did not prevent the change in attractiveness due to mating. The ejaculate and ovarian activation are suggested as causal factors in these processes.

Two-item same-different concept learning in pigeons

We report the first successful demonstration of a simultaneous, two-itemsame-different (S/D) discrimination by 6 pigeons, in which nonpictorial color and shape stimuli were used. This study was conducted because the majority of recently successful demonstrations of S/D discrimination in pigeons have employed displays with more than two items. Two pairs of stimulus items were simultaneously presented on a touch screen equipped computer monitor. Pigeons were reinforced for consistently pecking at either thesame (i.e., identical) or thedifferent (i.e., nonidentical) pair of items. These pairs were created from combinations of simple colored shapes drawn from a pool of six colors and six shapes. After acquiring the discrimination with item pairs that differed redundantly in both the shape and the color dimensions, the pigeons were tested for transfer to items that varied in only one of these dimensions. Although both dimensions contributed to the discrimination, greater control was exhibited by the color dimension. Most important, the discrimination transferred in tests with novel colored, shaped, and sized items, suggesting that the mechanisms involved were not stimulus specific but were more generalized in nature. These results suggest that the capacity to judge S/D relations is present in pigeons even when only two stimuli are used to implement this contrast.

Capacity and limits of associative memory in pigeons.

How much information can a brain store over a lifetime’s experience? The answer to this important, but little researched, question was investigated by looking at the long-term visual memory capacity of 2 pigeons. Over 700 sessions, the pigeons were tested with an increasingly larger pool of pictorial stimuli in a two-alternative discrimination task (incremented in sets of 20 or 30 pictures). Each picture was randomly assigned to either a right or a left choice response, forcing the pigeons to memorize each picture and its associated response. At the end of testing, 1 pigeon was performing at 73% accuracy with a memory set of over 1,800 pictures, and the 2nd was at 76% accuracy with a memory set of over 1,600 pictures. Adjusted for guessing, models of the birds’ performance suggested that the birds had access, on average, to approximately 830 memorized picture—response associations and that these were retained for months at a time. Reaction time analyses suggested that access to these memories was parallel in nature. Over the last 6 months of testing, this capacity estimate was stable for both birds, despite their learning increasingly more items, suggesting some limit on the number of picture—response associations that could be discriminated and retained in the long-term memory portion of this task. This represents the first empirically established limit on long-term memory use for any vertebrate species. The existence of this large exemplar-specific memory capacity has important implications for the evolution of stimulus control and for current theories of avian and human cognition.

Opiate antagonists enhance the working memory of rats in the radial maze

Two experiments tested the influence of the opiate antagonists naloxone and naltrexone on the spatial working memory of rats in a 12-arm radial maze. In Experiment 1, ten rats were serially forced to visit six randomly selected arms, then were removed from the maze for delays of either 30, 60, or 240 minutes, and then returned to the maze for a free-choice memory test with all 12 arms available. Five minutes into the delay, rats were injected intraperitoneally (IP) with either physiological saline or naloxone (1 mg/kg). When injected with naloxone the rats revisited forced-choice arms less often than when injected with saline during a subsequent free-choice test. In Experiment 2, twelve rats showed a similar facilitation of working memory when injected with the opiate antagonists naltrexone (0.3 mg/kg) and naloxone (1 mg/kg) in comparison to a saline control condition. These findings demonstrate the beneficial effects that opiate antagonists exert on working memory-based performance in the radial maze. They may also resolve conflicting reports about the influence of opiate antagonists on radial maze performance, by suggesting that the choice of measurement and testing conditions are crucial for detecting these effects in working memory procedures.

Mechanisms of multidimensional grouping, fusion, and search in avian texture discrimination

The influence of dimensional organization on pigeon texture perception was examined in a simultaneous conditional discrimination procedure. Six experienced pigeons were reinforced for pecking at a small block oftarget elements randomly located within a larger array ofdistractor elements in each texture stimulus. Target/distractor differences in color, size, orientation, and combinations of these dimensions were examined. In Experiment 1, the influence of target/distractor similarity on performance was investigated by using different forms of unidimensional and conjunctively organized texture stimuli made of two and three dimensions. Targets infeature displays, in which the two regions consistently differed along a single dimension, were located more accurately than targets inconjunctive displays, where a combination of values from all dimensions defined each region. In Experiment 2, a tradeoff between response speed and accuracy was found in the pigeons’ processing of conjunctive displays. In Experiment 3, the number of distractors differentially influenced the localization of feature and conjunctive targets. Overall, the pigeons’ reactions to these feature and conjunctive stimuli paralleled those of humans, suggesting that functionally equivalent mechanisms may mediate the perceptual grouping, search, and discrimination of textured multidimensional stimuli in both species.