Abstract
Three pigeons were trained in a three-item simultaneous same/different task. Three of six stimulus combinations were not trained (untrained set) and were tested later. Following acquisition, the subjects were tested with novel stimuli, the untrained set, training-stimulus inversions, and object shape and color manipulations. There was no novel-stimulus transfer—that is, no abstract-concept learning. Two pigeons showed partial transfer to untrained pairs and good transfer to stimulus inversions, suggesting that they had learned the relationship between the stimuli. Lack of transfer by the third pigeon suggests item-specific learning. The somewhat surprising finding of relational learning by 2 pigeons with only six training pairs suggests restricted-domain relational learning that was controlled more by color than by shape features. Individual differences of item-specific learning by 1 pigeon and relational learning by 2 others demonstrate that this task can be learned in different ways and that relational learning can occur in the absence of novel-stimulus transfer.
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This research was supported by NIH Grants 5 T32 NS07467, MH-061798, and MH-072616, and by NSF Grant IBN-0316113.
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Elmore, L.C., Wright, A.A., Rivera, J.J. et al. Individual differences: Either relational learning or item-specific learning in a same/different task. Learning & Behavior 37, 204–213 (2009). https://doi.org/10.3758/LB.37.2.204
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/LB.37.2.204