Pigeons can discriminate locations presented in pictures

Abstract

The present experiments were designed to teach pigeons to discriminate two locations represented by color photographs. Two sets of photographs were taken at two distinctive locations on a university campus. These sets represented several standpoints at each location. For the true-discrimination group, pictures from the two locations were differentially associated with reward; for the pseudodiscrimination group, half of the views from each location were arbitrarily but consistently associated with reward. The former group acquired the discrimination much more rapidly. These birds also showed good transfer to new views from the standpoints used in training and to a new standpoint at each location not used in training. In a second experiment, another group of pigeons could terminate any training trial by pecking an "advance" key. Three of 4 subjects used this option to reduce the duration of trials in which pictures from the negative location were presented. These data suggest that pigeons can integrate views shown in pictures into a "concept" of a location. The method used here may be the experimental analogue of a common, natural process by which animals learn to identify locations.