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.
Five pigeons were first trained to discriminate among line
drawings of four objects: a watering can, an iron, a desk lamp,
and a sailboat. The birds were then tested with eight versions of
each object, in which the object's components were vertically and
horizontally rearranged. The pigeons displayed different degrees
of generalization decrement to the different scrambled versions
of the objects. Two analyses helped to clarify the nature of the
varied accuracy scores. First, cluster analyses disclosed
subsets of components that were related to test performance.
Second, although the clusters varied somewhat across birds for a
given object, there was reliable concordance among the subjects
in their rankings of the individual scramblings, suggesting that
the pigeons may have attended to common aspects of the drawings.
Key words: picture perception, attention, stimulus control,
pigeon