Saturday, 5 April 2014

Can Pigeons Help You Do Laundry?

Well probably not. But they can help you distinguish different items from each other. A study by Wasserman and Castro (2014) found that pigeons can actually place everyday things into categories as well as tell what visual information is new, not new, or important. This is known as selective attention and occurs because of all the commotion and hustle and bustle around us. Because people and animals cannot attend to all properties in our environments, we use selective attention to place things into categories to tease out what is the most important stimuli to pay attention to. This is a vital skill to have because all animals need to be able to tell the difference between a friend, foe, or food for daily survival. The study by Wasserman and Castro (2014) used pigeons that would peck on a screen that had two sets of four computer-generated images such as stars, spirals, and bubbles. The pigeons would then distinguish one set from the other. They found that the pigeons could distinguish the difference between these sets and that learning about an object's relevant characteristics and using its characteristics to categorize it go together. Researchers have even been able to extend this ability to lizards and goldfish making for an interesting clue into the world of animal cognition.

References

Wasserman, E & Castro, L 2014, 'Pigeons' tracking of relevant attributes in categorization learning', Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition.

learning about an object's relevant characteristics and using those characteristics to categorize it go hand-in-hand.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-04-pigeons-animals-everyday-categories-humans.html#jCp
learning about an object's relevant characteristics and using those characteristics to categorize it go hand-in-hand.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-04-pigeons-animals-everyday-categories-humans.html#jCp
learning about an object's relevant characteristics and using those characteristics to categorize it go hand-in-hand.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-04-pigeons-animals-everyday-categories-humans.html#jCp
presented the birds with a touchscreen containing two sets of four computer-generated images—such as stars, spirals, and bubbles.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-04-pigeons-animals-everyday-categories-humans.html#jCp
presented the birds with a touchscreen containing two sets of four computer-generated images—such as stars, spirals, and bubbles.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-04-pigeons-animals-everyday-categories-humans.html#jCp
presented the birds with a touchscreen containing two sets of four computer-generated images—such as stars, spirals, and bubbles.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-04-pigeons-animals-everyday-categories-humans.html#jCp
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2 comments:

  1. Tasmin8 April 2014 at 00:29

    Very cool! I love it when we find that supposedly “simple” animals are capable of astounding us in the cognitive field! Selective attention is definitely something that humans do seem to engage particularly well in (particularly at university ;) ). I really enjoyed the title and I’m intrigued as to how you came up with it? You mention that even goldfish can engage in this. Can you provide a little more information? Very nice!

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  2. Unknown8 April 2014 at 05:50

    Thank you so much! I actually came up with the title when I thought about how humans do simple tasks every day that include categorizing items. For instance, when we put laundry away we classify each item by what type of clothing it is, where it goes in our dresser/ closet, and sometimes even by color or how often we where the item (items we wear less often tend to go at the bottom of our dresser). I have yet to find a specific study on the ability of goldfish to do this specific cognitive ability, however other studies on this ability in pigeons have also cited that other birds, lizards, and fish may have this ability (most likely for survival purposes).

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