Avian Same-Different Concept Learning and Perception

库克鸟的行为就好像是在一个充满物体的视觉世界中感知、学习和行动。这项研究的最终目标是了解这些小型自主系统如何形成对视觉世界的准确感知，并利用这些信息来学习和预测关于物体和事件之间关系的信息。拟议的研究通过观察一种高度视觉化的非哺乳动物系统——鸽子（Columba livia）的视觉和认知机制来检验这些问题。鸽子是比较认知研究的理想对象，因为为了飞行而尽量减轻体重的要求，使鸟类进化出了小巧、紧凑而强大的中枢神经系统，具有非凡的视觉感知能力和学习复杂区分的能力。这项新研究建立在PI之前的nsf支持的研究基础上，通过检查这种动物的视觉辨别和对相同-不同关系的抽象概念化的机制。指导和识别差异和相似性的能力对我们理解感知、概念行为、智力相关行为及其通过语言的象征性中介的影响。研究这些关系的一个有力手段是相同的不同判断任务。在这个任务中，当两个或更多的刺激与其他刺激不同时，受试者被要求做出“相同”的反应。目前的建议是在PI最近成功地在鸽子身上产生这种类型的歧视之后提出的，旨在更好地理解动物中这种重要而很少研究的歧视的机制。本研究的目的是分析和分离多类型刺激下奇数项和2项相同差异歧视的知觉和概念机制。除了对我们理解学习的一般意义外，研究还将探讨自下而上、刺激驱动、感知过程和自上而下、主体驱动、控制过程在鸽子辨别和选择行为中的相互作用。在适当的情况下，将对人类和机器感知以及概念学习和行为的理论和发现进行比较。总的来说，这个项目将提供关于基于视觉的概念学习的结构和过程的新证据-特别是在鸟类中，在动物中更普遍。

9604359 Cook Birds behave as if the perceive, learn and act upon an object-filled visual world. The ultimate goal of this research is to understand how these small autonomous systems form accurate perceptions of the visual world and use this information to learn and predict information about the relations among objects and events. The proposed research examines these questions by looking at the visual and cognitive mechanisms of one highly visual non-mammalian system - the pigeon (Columba livia). Pigeons are ideal for comparative cognitive studies because the demands to minimize body weight for flight have caused birds to evolve small, compact, and powerful central nervous systems capable of exceptional visual perception and the learning of complex discriminations. The new research builds on the PI's prior NSF-supported research by examining the mechanisms underlying the visual discrimination and abstract conceptualization of same-different relations by this animal. The capacity to direct and recognize difference and similarity implications for our understanding of perception, conceptual behavior, intelligence-related behaviors, and their symbolic mediation by language. One powerful means of studying these relations has been the same-different judgment task. In this task, the subject is asked to respond "same" when two or more stimuli are different from the others. The current proposal follows up on the PI's recent success in producing this type of discrimination in pigeons, and is designed to gain a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying this important and little studied discrimination in animals. The aims of the new research are to analyze and separate the perceptual and conceptual mechanisms of odd-item and 2-item same-different discriminations using multiple types of stimuli. Besides its general implications for our understanding of the learning, study will address interaction of bottom-up, stimulus driven, perceptual processes and top-down, subject-driven, control process in the government of pigeon discrimination and choice behavior. Where appropriate, comparisons to the theories and findings of human and machine perception and conceptual learning and behavior will be made. Overall, this project will provide new evidence concerning the structure and processes of visual-based concept learning - in birds specifically, and in animals more generally.