Abstract
Pigeons were trained to discriminate pictures of intact objects from pictures of objects in which both depth from shading and depth from perspective cues were manipulated. Depth from shading was manipulated either by scrambling or by removing three-dimensional shading cues. Depth from perspective was manipulated either by presenting pictures of objects with a two-dimensional outline (i.e., a square) or with a three-dimensional outline (i.e., a cube). Transfer tests with novel images suggest that pigeons perceive and utilize both types of pictorial depth cues. The implications of these results for our understanding of picture perception in pigeons are discussed.
Article PDF
References
Bayne, K. A. L., &Davis, R. T. (1983). Susceptibility of rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) to the Ponzo illusion.Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society,21, 476–478.
Cabe, P. A. (1976). Transfer of discrimination from solid objects to pictures by pigeons: A test of theoretical models of pictorial perception.Perception & Psychophysics,19, 545–550.
Cerella, J. (1980). The pigeon’s analysis of pictures.Pattern Recognition,12, 1–6.
Delius, J. D. (1992). Categorical discrimination of objects and pictures by pigeons.Animal Learning & Behavior,20, 301–311.
Edwards, C. A., &Honig, W. K. (1987). Memorization and “feature selection” in the acquisition of natural concepts in pigeons.Learning & Motivation,18, 235–260.
Fujita, K., Blough, D. S., &Blough, P. M. (1991). Pigeons see the Ponzo illusion.Animal Learning & Behavior,19, 283–293.
Fujita, K., Blough, D. S., &Blough, P. M. (1993). Effects of the inclination of context lines on perception of the Ponzo illusion by pigeons.Animal Learning & Behavior,21, 29–34.
Hernstein, R. J., &Loveland, D. H. (1964). Complex visual concept in the pigeon.Science,146, 549–551.
Hershberger, W. (1970). Attached-shadow orientation perceived as depth by chickens reared in an environment illuminated from below.Journal of Comparative & Physiological Psychology,73, 407–411.
Kanizsa, G., Renzi, P., Conte, S., Compostela, C., &Guerani, L. (1993). Amodal completion in mouse vision.Perception,22, 713–721.
Kirkpatrick-Steger, K., Wasserman, E. A., &Biederman, I. (1996). Effects of spatial rearrangement of object components on picture recognition in pigeons.Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior,65, 465–475.
Lea, S. E. G., Slater, A. M., &Ryan, C. M. E. (1996). Perception of object unity in chicks: A comparison with the human infant.Infant Behavior & Development,19, 501–504.
Lumsden, E. A. (1977). Generalization of an operant response to photographs and drawings/silhouettes of a three-dimensional object at various orientations.Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society,10, 405–407.
Osada, Y., &Schiller, P. H. (1994). Can monkeys see objects under conditions of transparency and occlusion?Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science,35, 1664.
Regolin, L., &Vallortigara, G. (1995). Perception of partly occluded objects by young chicks.Perception & Psychophysics,57, 971–976.
Sekuler, A. B., Lee, J. A. J., &Shettleworth, S. J. (1996). Pigeons do not complete partly occluded figures.Perception,25, 1109–1120.
Spetch, M. L., Kelly, D. M., &Lechelt, D. P. (1998). Encoding of spatial information in images of an outdoor scene by pigeons and humans.Animal Learning & Behavior,26, 85–102.
Spetch, M. L., &Wilkie, D. M. (1994). Pigeons’ use of landmarks presented in digitized images.Learning & Motivation,25, 245–275.
Timney, B., &Keil, K. (1996). Horses are sensitive to pictorial depth cues.Perception,25, 1121–1128.
Trillmich, T. (1976). Learning experiments on individual recognition in budgerigars (Melopsittacus undulatus).Zeitschrift für Tierpsychologie,41, 372–395.
Wasserman, E. A., Gagliardi, J. L., Cook, B. R., Kirkpatrick-Steger, K., Astley, S. L., &Biederman, I. (1996). The pigeon’s recognition of drawings of depth-rotated stimuli.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes,22, 205–221.
Wasserman, E. A., Kiedinger, R. E., &Bhatt, R. S. (1988). Conceptual behavior in pigeons: Categories, subcategories, and pseudocategories.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes,14, 235–246.
Watanabe, S. (1993). Object-picture equivalence in the pigeon: An analysis with natural concept and pseudoconcept discriminations.Behavioural Processes,30, 225–232.
Watanabe, S. (1997). Visual discrimination of real objects and pictures in pigeons.Animal Learning & Behavior,25, 185–192.
White, K. G., Alsop, B., &Williams, L. (1993). Prototype identification and categorization of incomplete figures by pigeons.Behavioural Processes,30, 253–258.
Wilkie, D. M., Willson, R. J., &MacDonald, S. E. (1992). Animals’ perception and memory for places. In W. K. Honig & J. G. Fetterman (Eds.),Cognitive aspects of stimulus control (pp. 89–112). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
The research presented in this paper was also presented at the International Conference on Comparative Cognition in Melbourne, FL (March 1997). This research was supported by an operating grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada to M.L.S. We thank D. Kelly for assistance with the research.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Reid, S.L., Spetch, M.L. Perception of pictorial depth cues by pigeons. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 5, 698–704 (1998). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03208848
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03208848