Physiopsychological study of animal visual pattern learning

本文通过四项实验研究了鸟类视觉模式学习的生物心理机制。前两个实验澄清了两点。1)构造视觉通路在鸽子视觉模式识别的半球间转移中起着重要作用；2)鸟类可以通过同侧视觉系统学习单眼识别。第三个实验利用电脑控制的电视屏幕上显示的圆点图案进行判别训练，证明了鸽子原型学习的失败。也就是说，鸟类不能从扭曲的样本中抽象出一个原型。这一结果表明鸟类与人类的模式识别存在物种差异。第四项实验表明，外纹状体损伤导致了复杂视觉概念的识别缺陷。另一方面，新纹状体病变未引起视觉辨别学习障碍。因此，复杂视觉模式的识别是由构造视觉通路处理的。这一结果与前两次实验的结果一致。

Following four experiments were carried out to study biopsychological mechanisms of visual pattern learning in birds. The first two experiments clarified two points. 1) tectofugal visual pathway has a cruicial role in interhemispheric transfer of visual pattern discrimination in pigeons, and 2) the birds can learn monocular discrimination with their ipsilateral visual system. Using discriminative training of dot patterns displayed on a computer- controlled TV screen, the third experiment demonstrated a failure of prototype learning in the pigeon. That is, the birds cannot abstract a prototype from its distorted samples. This result suggests species difference of pattern discrimination between birds and humans. The fourth experiments showed that lesions of the ectostriatum caused deficits in discrimination of complex visual concept. On the other hand, lesions of neostriatum did not cause any deficits in the visual discrimination learning. Thus, discrimination of complex visual pattern is processed by the tectofugal visual patway. This result agrees with those obtained from the first two experiments.