Open main menu
Home
Random
Recent changes
Special pages
Community portal
Preferences
About Wikipedia
Disclaimers
Incubator escapee wiki
Search
User menu
Talk
Dark mode
Contributions
Create account
Log in
Editing
Animal cognition
(section)
Warning:
You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you
log in
or
create an account
, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.
Anti-spam check. Do
not
fill this in!
==== Relational or abstract categories ==== When tested in a simple stimulus matching-to-sample task (described above) many animals readily learn specific item combinations, such as "touch red if the sample is red, touch green if the sample is green." But this does not demonstrate that they distinguish between "same" and "different" as general concepts. Better evidence is provided if, after training, an animal successfully makes a choice that matches a novel sample that it has never seen before. Monkeys and chimpanzees do learn to do this, as do pigeons if they are given a great deal of practice with many different stimuli. However, because the sample is presented first, successful matching might mean that the animal is simply choosing the most recently seen "familiar" item rather than the conceptually "same" item. A number of studies have attempted to distinguish these possibilities, with mixed results.<ref name="Shettleworth" /><ref name="Zentall" />
Edit summary
(Briefly describe your changes)
By publishing changes, you agree to the
Terms of Use
, and you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the
CC BY-SA 4.0 License
and the
GFDL
. You agree that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license.
Cancel
Editing help
(opens in new window)