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Updated: May 31, 2026
08:35
An Operant Intra-/Extra-dimensional Set-shift Task for Mice
Published on: January 22, 2016
The dimensional nature of same-different discrimination behavior in pigeons
Leyre Castro1, Edward A Wasserman
1Department of Psychology, University of Iowa, IA City, IA 52242, USA. leyre-castroruiz@uiowa.edu
Summary
Pigeons
Area of Science:
- Cognitive psychology
- Animal behavior
Background:
- Pigeons can discriminate between arrays of identical and non-identical items.
- This discrimination is conditional on background color.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the dimensional nature of same-different discrimination in pigeons.
- To explore how entropy disparity affects discrimination accuracy and reaction time.
Main Methods:
- Pigeons were trained to discriminate between Same and Different arrays.
- Mixture arrays were used to test discrimination performance.
- Accuracy and reaction time were measured under varying entropy disparities.
Main Results:
- Discrimination accuracy increased with greater entropy disparity between arrays.
- Reaction time decreased as entropy disparity increased.
- Lower entropy values were more discriminable than higher entropy values.
Conclusions:
- Pigeon's same-different discrimination aligns with a logarithmic relationship between entropy and behavior.
- These findings suggest that same-different discrimination in pigeons follows Weber's Law.
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