Pigeon category learning: Revisiting the Shepard, Hovland, and Jenkins (1961) tasks.

ABSTRACT: In a seminal study, Shepard, Hovland, and Jenkins (1961; henceforth SHJ) assessed potential mechanisms involved in categorization learning. To do so, they sequentially trained human participants with 6 different visual categorization tasks that varied in structural complexity. Humans' exceptionally strong performance on 1 of these tasks (Type 2, organized around exclusive-or relations) could not be solely explained by structural complexity, and has since been considered the hallmark of rule-use in these tasks. In the present project, we concurrently trained pigeons on all 6 SHJ tasks. Our results revealed that the structural complexity of the tasks was highly correlated with group-level performance. Nevertheless, we observed notable individual differences in performance. Two extensions of

SUBMITTER: Navarro VM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6730555 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature