Visual structure and intelligence in pigeons

Robert G. Cook

Tufts University, USA

When we open our eyes, we see a world that consists of stable, meaningful, and unified objects that move in spatially and temporally predictable ways. We are readily able to visually detect, grasp, catch, and avoid these objects both effortlessly and efficiently. For humans, objects and their relative similarity seem to provide the functional units guiding these dynamic interactions with the world. My talk focuses on whether these same structural components also inform the interactions of other highly mobile creatures, such as the pigeon, as they deal with their dynamic world. It will examine how pigeons use two different types of structure in the visual environment to discriminate among complex stimuli. The first line of research focuses on whether pigeons react to the world as if it were filled with unified objects. The second line of research examines their capacity to recognize and conceptualize the same/different relations among such complex stimuli. Drawing from recent experiments testing pigeons in both simultaneous and successive discrimination procedures evidence will be presented that these animals can detect the three-dimensional structure of objects in complex scenes and use such visual information to form an abstract concept of the sameness and difference among such stimuli. Comparisons to the perceptual and conceptual capacities of other animals will be considered and the value of a comparative approach to issues of visual intelligence highlighted.

Cook, R.G., & Katz, J.S. (1999). Dynamic object perception in pigeons. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, 25, 194-210.

Cook, R.G., Katz, J.S., & Kelly, D. M. (1999). Pictorial same-different concept learning and discrimination in pigeons. Current Psychology of Cognition, 18, 805-844.

Cook, R. G., Katz, J. S., & Cavoto, B. R. (1997). Pigeon same-different concept learning with multiple stimulus classes. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, 23, 417-433.

Cook, Robert G.

Department of Psychology, Tufts University

490 Boston Ave, Medford, MA 02155, USA

rcook1@emerald.tufts.edu