ASSOCIATIVE LEARNING: Pigeons can solve a task that would stump humans
Although pigeons are often belittled for being dim-witted, 60 years of scientific study suggest that pigeons possess far more formidable brain power than is commonly believed and are remarkably adept classifiers of complex visual stimuli.
ED WASSERMAN: Bread–butter. Bird–fly. Hot–cold. Sky–blue. These are just a few of the countless deep-seated associations we’ve all acquired in our prior experience. The basis of such associative learning is so simple it’s often taken for granted: Events are connected that regularly happen together in time. Yet, associative learning plays a critical part in our lives, among other things, shaping our likes and dislikes. Associative learning also serves as the foundation for the increasingly stunning feats of artificial intelligence.
Might associative learning also empower both humans and nonhuman animals to learn far more challenging tasks than merely connecting one event with another? Here’s where research with pigeons comes into play. Yes, pigeons! Although pigeons are often belittled for being dim-witted, 60 years of scientific study have revealed that pigeons are remarkably adept classifiers of complex visual stimuli—from snapshots of common objects such as trees, dogs, keys, and shoes to medical images of human breast tissue and heart muscle. These findings suggest that pigeons possess far more formidable brain power than is commonly believed.
A new study supports this less lofty possibility… Titled, “Resolving the associative learning paradox by category learning in pigeons,” it was published… in the journal Current Biology… Pigeons were tasked with sorting rather basic visual stimuli into two different categories. The stimuli were circular grids containing stripes of varying widths and angles. Pigeons had to peck one of two buttons to report the particular category to which a given grid belonged if they were to earn a food reward. If the pigeons pecked the incorrect button, then no food was given, and one or more correction trials were arranged until the correct response was made. Only first choices were scored for data analysis.
The task would have been exceptionally easy if either the width (frequency) or the angle (orientation) of the stripes alone determined category membership. However, the task the pigeons had to solve prohibited this prosaic possibility; instead, seemingly haphazard clusters of striped grids were assigned to the two categories. Now, only rote association of the presented grids with the appropriate choice responses provided the effective route to task mastery… An explanatory video is located here.
Nonetheless, all four of the pigeons we studied robustly learned this diabolically difficult task, rising from the 50 percent chance level to approximately 70 percent correct. The pigeons’ patience and persistence certainly paid off, but we have yet to subject people to the same grueling task lest they quit in frustration… The pigeons’ success is due to their deploying an elegant, but highly effective natural associative mechanism that strikingly resembles the artificial associative algorithm programmers commonly upload into today’s digital computers. SOURCE…
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