PERCEPTUAL BASES OF VISUAL CONCEPTS

把不同的外界刺激区别对待的能力 公共类的成员是概念化的定义属性。 先前的研究表明，像人类和鸽子一样的动物种类繁多 可以将逼真的视觉刺激分为自然和人工两种 类别。目前的建议旨在看看感性的 人类和鸽子的概念化过程是相似的。 鸽子将接受操作性条件反射程序的训练 区分自然和人工刺激的线条画。他们会 然后用特别修改的刺激进行测试，该刺激：(A)删除某些 训练刺激的部分，(B)重新安排其组成部分，或 (C)深度旋转图像。这些测试刺激产生高度选择性 对人类的影响，这鼓励了我们将 通过零碎的、感知的过程识别物体--通过 组件。如果人类和鸽子类似地处理视觉刺激，那么 计划中的一系列鸽子实验的结果应该是 将早先获得的结果与人进行比较。经验上的收敛将 证明了自然的经济性和语言的多余性 概念化。经验分歧将意味着不同的 神经生物学或语言机制在人的视觉概念中起中介作用 还有鸽子。无论是哪种情况，这个研究项目的结果都应该是 对概念化的物种共性和 可以为认知科学家和计算机科学家提供重要线索 可能会更成功地设计能够可视化的智能系统 模式识别。这一结果还可以促进行为 分析学习中的歧视和泛化过程-- 残障或语言缺陷的人类。

The ability to treat discriminatively different external stimuli as members of a common class is the defining attribute of conceptualization. Prior work has shown that animals as diverse as human beings and pigeons can classify lifelike visual stimuli into natural and artificial categories. The present proposal aims to see whether the perceptual processes of conceptualization are similar in humans and pigeons. Pigeons will be trained with operant conditioning procedures to discriminate line drawings of natural and artificial stimuli. They will then be tested with specially-modified stimuli that: (a) delete certain portions of the training stimulus, (b) rearrange its component parts, or (c) rotate the image in depth. These test stimuli produce highly selective effects in humans, which have encouraged the view that we categorize objects by means of a piecemeal,perceptual process--recognition by components. If people and pigeons similarly process visual stimuli, then the results of the planned series of experiments with pigeons should parallel those obtained earlier with people. Empirical convergence would attest to the economy of nature and to the superfluity of language for conceptualization. Empirical divergence would imply that different neurobiological or linguistic mechanisms mediate visual concepts in people and pigeons. In either case, the results of this research project should shed considerable light on the species generality of conceptualization and could yield important clues for how cognitive and computer scientists might more successfully design intelligent systems capable of visual pattern recognition. The results could also promote the behavioral analysis of discrimination and generalization processes in learning- disabled or language-deficient humans.