Comparative Vision Science: Seeing Eye to Eye (original) (raw)
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COMPARATIVE APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF BASIC PROCESSES OF COGNITION: A TALE OF THREE SPECIES
A predominant trend throughout the evolution of animals has been an increase in neural complexity. Comparative cognition research investigates cognition in diverse species to better understand the evolution of cognition. I present research from my own lab involving rats, pigeons, and hermit crabs, that illustrates some basic cognitive processes found in the Animal Kingdom. I discuss some of my work on perception, attention, and simple learning in the terrestrial Caribbean hermit crab; associative learning, memory, and spatial cognition in the pigeon; and temporal cognition, causal reasoning, and rational inferences in the rat. An overarching theme emerges that more complex processes build upon simpler ones, such as learning and memory building on perception, and rational inference building on associative learning and memory. I close with a discussion of the future of research in comparative cognition.
2012
Previous comparative work has suggested that the mechanisms of object categorization differ importantly for birds and primates. However, behavioral and neurobiological differences do not preclude the possibility that at least some of those mechanisms are shared across these evolutionarily distant groups. The present study integrates behavioral, neurobiological, and computational evidence concerning the "general processes" that are involved in object recognition in vertebrates. We start by reviewing work implicating error-driven learning in object categorization by birds and primates, and also consider neurobiological evidence suggesting that the basal ganglia might implement this process. We then turn to work with a computational model showing that principles of visual processing discovered in the primate brain can account for key behavioral findings in object recognition by pigeons, including cases in which pigeons' behavior differs from that of people. These results provide a proof of concept that the basic principles of visual shape processing are similar across distantly related vertebrate species, thereby offering important insights into the evolution of visual cognition. Keywords Object categorization. Object recognition. Error-driven learning. Hierarchical model. Feedforward processing. Comparative cognition. Avian vision. Pigeon. Computational model. Animal models. Visual cortex Many species must visually recognize and categorize objects to successfully adapt to their environments. Considerable comparative research has been conducted in object recognition, especially involving pigeons and people, whose visual systems have independently evolved from a common ancestor, from which their lineages diverged more than 300 million years ago. The results of behavioral studies have sometimes disclosed striking similarities between these species, and at other times have disclosed notable disparities, especially pointing toward a lower ability of pigeons to recognize transformed versions of familiar objects (for reviews, see Kirkpatrick, 2001; Spetch & Friedman, 2006). Similarly, the results of neurobiological studies have revealed both similarities and disparities in the structures that underlie visual object processing. The overall organization of the two visual systems is quite similar, with the most notable shared feature being their subdivision into parallel pathways. All amniotes (mammals, birds, and reptiles) have two main visual pathways from retina to telencephalon: the thalamofugal and tectofugal pathways (see Fig.
Old and New Approaches to Animal Cognition: There Is Not “One Cognition”
Journal of Intelligence
Using the comparative approach, researchers draw inferences about the evolution of cognition. Psychologists have postulated several hypotheses to explain why certain species are cognitively more flexible than others, and these hypotheses assume that certain cognitive skills are linked together to create a generally “smart” species. However, empirical findings suggest that several animal species are highly specialized, showing exceptional skills in single cognitive domains while performing poorly in others. Although some cognitive skills may indeed overlap, we cannot a priori assume that they do across species. We argue that the term “cognition” has often been used by applying an anthropocentric viewpoint rather than a biocentric one. As a result, researchers tend to overrate cognitive skills that are human-like and assume that certain skills cluster together in other animals as they do in our own species. In this paper, we emphasize that specific physical and social environments cre...
Pattern Recognition Invariance in Pigeons (Columbia Livia): Outline, Color and Contrast
1988
ABSTRA eT: Pigeons that had extensive training with an oddity-from -sam pIe discrimination procedure using visual patterns, and that could transfer their performance to novel patterns, were tested for three kinds of pattern recognition invariance. In one invariance experiment the sample stimuli were silhouette shapes and the comparison stimuli were outline figures. In another experiment the samples were white shapes on a dark background whereas the comparisons were black shapes on a bright background. In a third experiment the sample and comparison shapes were of different color. All the shapes used for invariance testing were novel to the pigeons. Performance during the tests was above 90% correct except in the case of the reversed contrast experiment, where it reached only 77%; dazzling and/or attention problems may have been a disturbing factor. Even in this condition, however, significant transfer was obtained. Generally the pigeons showed that they are capable of invariant shape recognition under all three conditions. Since all critical tests involved shapes that were novel to the subjects the results also confirmed that pigeons can conceptualize a relational oddity/identity rule. ZUSAMMENFASSUNG: Tauben, die vielseitige Erfahrung mit einer visuellen Wahl-nach-Muster Diskriminationsprozedur hatten und die fiihig waren, ihr Wahlverhalten auf neue Formen zu iibertragen, wurden mit drei verschiedenen Erkennungsinvarianzaufgaben getestet. In einem Invarianzversuch waren die Musterreize Silhouetten und die Vergleichsmuster Umrisse. In einem anderen Experiment waren die Muster weiBe Formen auf schwarzem Hintergrund, wiihrend die VergIeichsmuster schwarze Formen aufweiBem Hintergrund waren. In einem dritten Experiment waren die Muster-und VergIeichsformen verschiedenerlei Farben. Alle die Formen, die zur Invarianzpriifung benutzt wurden, waren fUr die Tiere neu. Die Unterscheidungsleistungen lagen bei den Tests iiber 90% richtige Wahlen auBer bei dem Kontrastumkehrungsexperiment, wo sie nur 77% richtige erreichten. Blendungs-oder Aufmerksamkeitsprobleme mogen in diesem Fall beeintriichtigend gewesen sein. Aber selbst bei dieser Bedingung war der Leistungstransfer signifikant. Insgesamt zeigten die Tauben, daB sie unter alien drei Bedingungen der invarianten visuellen Formerkennung fiihig sind. Da alle kritischen Tests den Tauben unbekannte Formen beinhalteten, bestiitigen die Ergebnisse auch, daB sie fiihig sind, eine relation ale Gleich/Verschieden-Regel zu konzeptualisieren.
Comparative Vertebrate Cognition
Springer eBooks, 2004
Comparative vertebrate cognition: are primates superior to non-primates? / edited by Lesley ]. Rogers and Gisela Kaplan. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index.
More than one way to see it: Individual heuristics in avian visual computation
Comparative pattern learning experiments investigate how different species find regularities in sensory input, providing insights into cognitive processing in humans and other animals. Past research has focused either on one species’ ability to process pattern classes or different species’ performance in recognizing the same pattern, with little attention to individual and species-specific heuristics and decision strategies. We trained and tested two bird species, pigeons (Columba livia) and kea (Nestor notabilis, a parrot species), on visual patterns using touch-screen technology. Patterns were composed of several abstract elements and had varying degrees of structural complexity. We developed a model selection paradigm, based on regular expressions, that allowed us to reconstruct the specific decision strategies and cognitive heuristics adopted by a given individual in our task. Individual birds showed considerable differences in the number, type and heterogeneity of heuristic strategies adopted. Birds’ choices also exhibited consistent species-level differences. Kea adopted effective heuristic strategies, based on matching learned bigrams to stimulus edges. Individual pigeons, in contrast, adopted an idiosyncratic mix of strategies that included local transition probabilities and global string similarity. Although performance was above chance and quite high for kea, no individual of either species provided clear evidence of learning exactly the rule used to generate the training stimuli. Our results show that similar behavioral outcomes can be achieved using dramatically different strategies and highlight the dangers of combining multiple individuals in a group analysis. These findings, and our general approach, have implications for the design of future pattern learning experiments, and the interpretation of comparative cognition research more generally.
Pattern recognition invariance in pigeons (Columba livia)
International journal of comparative psychology / ISCP; sponsored by the International Society for Comparative Psychology and the University of Calabria
ABSTRA eT: Pigeons that had extensive training with an oddity-from -sam pIe discrimination procedure using visual patterns, and that could transfer their performance to novel patterns, were tested for three kinds of pattern recognition invariance. In one invariance experiment the sample stimuli were silhouette shapes and the comparison stimuli were outline figures. In another experiment the samples were white shapes on a dark background whereas the comparisons were black shapes on a bright background. In a third experiment the sample and comparison shapes were of different color. All the shapes used for invariance testing were novel to the pigeons. Performance during the tests was above 90% correct except in the case of the reversed contrast experiment, where it reached only 77%; dazzling and/or attention problems may have been a disturbing factor. Even in this condition, however, significant transfer was obtained. Generally the pigeons showed that they are capable of invariant shape recognition under all three conditions. Since all critical tests involved shapes that were novel to the subjects the results also confirmed that pigeons can conceptualize a relational oddity/identity rule. ZUSAMMENFASSUNG: Tauben, die vielseitige Erfahrung mit einer visuellen Wahl-nach-Muster Diskriminationsprozedur hatten und die fiihig waren, ihr Wahlverhalten auf neue Formen zu iibertragen, wurden mit drei verschiedenen Erkennungsinvarianzaufgaben getestet. In einem Invarianzversuch waren die Musterreize Silhouetten und die Vergleichsmuster Umrisse. In einem anderen Experiment waren die Muster weiBe Formen auf schwarzem Hintergrund, wiihrend die VergIeichsmuster schwarze Formen aufweiBem Hintergrund waren. In einem dritten Experiment waren die Muster-und VergIeichsformen verschiedenerlei Farben. Alle die Formen, die zur Invarianzpriifung benutzt wurden, waren fUr die Tiere neu. Die Unterscheidungsleistungen lagen bei den Tests iiber 90% richtige Wahlen auBer bei dem Kontrastumkehrungsexperiment, wo sie nur 77% richtige erreichten. Blendungs-oder Aufmerksamkeitsprobleme mogen in diesem Fall beeintriichtigend gewesen sein. Aber selbst bei dieser Bedingung war der Leistungstransfer signifikant. Insgesamt zeigten die Tauben, daB sie unter alien drei Bedingungen der invarianten visuellen Formerkennung fiihig sind. Da alle kritischen Tests den Tauben unbekannte Formen beinhalteten, bestiitigen die Ergebnisse auch, daB sie fiihig sind, eine relation ale Gleich/Verschieden-Regel zu konzeptualisieren.
Towards a Comparative and Evolutionary Approach to Cognition: Reply to Commentaries
International Journal of Comparative Psychology, 1992
The four commentaries are interesting in two respects: first, in that they raise a number of further issues about animal cognition; and second, because they show how many different positions can be entertained on this matter. While Christopher Robinson clearly rejects the cognitive approach as an alternative to behaviorism, Robert Boakes has no basic objection to animal cognition, but focuses on its actual contribution and reminds us that the positive legacy of behaviorism should not be thrown away with the bath water. Within a comparative approach to cognition, Gordon Gallup suggests that the best framework for generating testable hypotheses is the study of complex mental processes like self-recognition and reflective thought. On the other hand, Jean Pierre Rossi raises the problem of identifying the lowest evolutionary level at which the existence of representations can be assumed. In the following, we shall try to briefly discuss the main points that have been raised. Christopher Robinson takes up William Mace's suggestion to "Ask not