Events Calendar

Psychological and Brain Sciences Dewey B. and Velma E. Stuit Lecture

Edward A. Wasserman, Stuit Professor of Experimental Psychology, Department of Psychology, University of Iowa

The Pigeon as an Associative Machine

Never known for its smarts, the pigeon has proven to be a prodigious classifier of complex visual stimuli. What explains its surprising success? Does it possess elaborate executive functions akin to those deployed by humans? Or does it effectively use an unheralded, but powerful associative learning mechanism to realize its prowess? In a series of experiments, we first show using tightly controlled visual stimuli that pigeons can learn a variety of category structures, some devised to foil the use of advanced cognitive processes. We then contrive a simple associative learning model to see how effectively and similarly the model learns the same tasks given to pigeons. The extremely close fit of the associative model to pigeons’ categorization behavior provides unprecedented support for associative learning as a viable mechanism for mastering complex category structures and for the pigeon’s using this mechanism to adapt to a rich and varied visual world.