Abstract
Two groups of pigeons were trained with a go/no-go procedure to discriminate video images of conspecifics based on the individuals or else on their actions. Both groups showed rapid acquisition, and the discrimination transferred to new scenes in Experiment 1 and to static scenes in Experiment 2. In Experiment 3, experimentally naive pigeons were trained to discriminate video images of particular birds showing different actions. Transfer to novel scenes, including a new bird and a new motion, revealed the dominance of motion as a cue to discriminate video images. In Experiment 4, the pigeons trained to discriminate video scenes of 2 pigeons showing a variety of activities successfully recognized these stimuli regardless of whether the video was played forward or backward, and transferred the discrimination to still scenes. The findings suggest that pigeons’ discrimination of video images is primarily based on information that is invariant across static and dynamic conditions.
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This research was supported by Grant 05206113 from the Japan Ministry of Education, Science, and Culture to M.J. We thank an anonymous reviewer for his/her most valuable comments. We are very grateful to Jacky Emmerton for her thoughtful comments on an earlier draft of this article.
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Jitsumori, M., Natori, M. & Okuyama, K. Recognition of moving video images of conspecifics by pigeons: Effects of individuals, static and dynamic motion cues, and movement. Animal Learning & Behavior 27, 303–315 (1999). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03199729
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03199729