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Updated: Sep 23, 2026

A Method for Investigating Change Blindness in Pigeons (Columba Livia)
Published on: September 7, 2018
Differential effects of visual context on pattern discrimination by pigeons (Columba livia) and humans (Homo sapiens)
Debbie M Kelly1, Robert G Cook
1Department of Psychology, Tufts University, USA. dkelly@unlserve.unl.edu
Abstract:
Three experiment examined the role of contextual information during line orientation and line position discriminations by pigeons (Columba livia) and humans (Homo sapiens). Experiment 1 tested pigeons' performance with these stimuli in a target localization task using texture displays. Experiments 2 and 3 tested pigeons and humans, respectively, with small and large variations of these stimuli in a same-different task. Humans showed a configural superiority effect when tested with displays constructed from large elements but not when tested with the smaller, more densely packed texture displays. The pigeons, in contrast, exhibited a configural inferiority effect when required to discriminate line orientation, regardless of stimulus size. These contrasting results suggest a species difference in the perceptionand use of features and contextual information in the discrimination of line information.
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