Lionello-DeNolf, K. M., & Urcuioli, P. J. (2000).
Transfer of pigeons' matching to sample to novel sample locations.
Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior,
73, 141-161.
This study examined the conditions under which conditional
stimulus control by the sample stimuli in three-key
matching-to-sample paradigms would generalize across the
different possible sample locations. In Experiments 1 and 2, the
samples appeared on the left and right side keys during initial
training and then on the center key during testing. Transfer of
pigeons' matching performances to the center-key samples was
evident after both identity and symbolic matching training. In
Experiment 3, pigeons trained on symbolic matching with two
side-key samples or with a side-key and a center-key sample
usually transferred their learned matching performances to those
samples when they subsequently appeared in the remaining (novel)
location. These results indicate that, when two-choice
conditional discriminations are learned with more than one sample
location, the visual characteristics of the sample per se
predominantly come to control the pigeons' comparison choices.
This finding encourages the use of the multiple-location training
procedure as a way of reducing control by location, thus
providing a more discriminating test of symmetry in animals.
Key words: sample location, matching to sample, transfer of
matching, symmetry, key peck, pigeons