Search research articles

ABOUT JoVE

Overview Leadership Blog JoVE Help Center

AUTHORS

Publishing Process Editorial Board Scope & Policies Peer Review FAQ Submit

LIBRARIANS

Testimonials Subscriptions Access Resources Library Advisory Board FAQ

RESEARCH

JoVE Journal Methods Collections JoVE Encyclopedia of Experiments Archive

EDUCATION

JoVE Core JoVE Business JoVE Science Education JoVE Lab Manual Faculty Resource Center Faculty Site

Terms & Conditions of Use

Related Concept Videos

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by

Same author

A psychological-scaling approach to unraveling the nature of Pigeons' categorization of natural visual objects.

Psychological review·2026

Same author

Nonnumerical stimuli exert surprisingly strong behavioral control in an unconstrained numerical discrimination learning task.

Cognition·2026

Same author

Variability, stability, and the law of effect.

Journal of experimental psychology. Animal learning and cognition·2026

Same author

Decoupling Design from Darwinian and Skinnerian Selection.

Perspectives on behavior science·2026

Same author

Focused and distributed: Diverse attentional profiles in pigeon category learning.

Learning & behavior·2026

Same author

Categorization of echocardiograms by humans and pigeons.

Frontiers in psychology·2026

Same journal

Facing ambiguity: What we do in the space between stimulus and response.

Current directions in psychological science·2026

Same journal

Escaping the Jingle-Jangle Jungle: Increasing Conceptual Clarity in Psychology Using Large Language Models.

Current directions in psychological science·2026

Same journal

Emotional Acculturation: Emotions as a Pathway to Social Integration.

Current directions in psychological science·2026

Same journal

Historical Change in Midlife Development from a Cross-National Perspective.

Current directions in psychological science·2026

Same journal

Embodied and Embedded Learning: Child, Caregiver, and Context.

Current directions in psychological science·2026

Same journal

A Framework for Automation in Psychotherapy.

Current directions in psychological science·2025

See all related articles

Search research articles

Related Experiment Video

Updated: Oct 1, 2025

A Method for Investigating Change Blindness in Pigeons Columba Livia

A Method for Investigating Change Blindness in Pigeons Columba Livia

Published on: September 7, 2018

Assessing Attention in Category Learning by Animals.

Edward A Wasserman¹, Leyre Castro¹

¹The University of Iowa.

Current Directions in Psychological Science

|March 9, 2022

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Pigeons, like humans, focus attention on relevant stimulus features during category learning. However, pigeons show less selective attention to predictable features after learning, suggesting distributed attention in animal cognition.

Keywords:

animal cognition attention attention assessment category learning pigeons

More Related Videos

Touchscreen Sustained Attention Task SAT for Rats

Touchscreen Sustained Attention Task SAT for Rats

Published on: September 15, 2017

A Fully Automated and Highly Versatile System for Testing Multi-cognitive Functions and Recording Neuronal Activities in Rodents

A Fully Automated and Highly Versatile System for Testing Multi-cognitive Functions and Recording Neuronal Activities in Rodents

Published on: May 3, 2012

Related Experiment Videos

Last Updated: Oct 1, 2025

A Method for Investigating Change Blindness in Pigeons Columba Livia

A Method for Investigating Change Blindness in Pigeons Columba Livia

Published on: September 7, 2018

Touchscreen Sustained Attention Task SAT for Rats

Touchscreen Sustained Attention Task SAT for Rats

Published on: September 15, 2017

A Fully Automated and Highly Versatile System for Testing Multi-cognitive Functions and Recording Neuronal Activities in Rodents

A Fully Automated and Highly Versatile System for Testing Multi-cognitive Functions and Recording Neuronal Activities in Rodents

Published on: May 3, 2012

Area of Science:

Cognitive psychology
Animal behavior
Comparative cognition

Background:

Categorical cognition relies on selective attention to stimulus features.
Measuring selective attention in nonhuman animals is crucial for understanding cognitive evolution.

Purpose of the Study:

To define and measure selective attention in animals, specifically pigeons.
To compare attention allocation during and after category learning in pigeons versus humans.

Main Methods:

Review of attention assessment methods in animals.
Development of novel experimental and computational tools for assessing attention in pigeons.
Analysis of attention to relevant vs. irrelevant and deterministic vs. probabilistic features during and after category acquisition.

Main Results:

Pigeons, similar to humans, allocate more attention to relevant than irrelevant features during category learning.
Post-acquisition, pigeons exhibit less selective attention to deterministic features compared to probabilistic ones.
Pigeons demonstrate more distributed attention patterns than humans.

Conclusions:

Pigeons' attention allocation during category learning mirrors human patterns.
Pigeons' post-acquisition attention is more distributed, differing from human selective attention.
New tools facilitate deeper understanding of the evolution and mechanisms of categorical cognition in animals.