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Spontaneous learning of visual structures in domestic chicks
Title / Series / Name
Publication Volume
Publication Issue
Pages
Editors
Keywords
Domestic chicks
Gallus gallus
Implicit learning
Imprinting
Positional information
Sequence learning
Spatial/visual configurations
Statistical learning
Animal Science and Zoology
General Veterinary
Gallus gallus
Implicit learning
Imprinting
Positional information
Sequence learning
Spatial/visual configurations
Statistical learning
Animal Science and Zoology
General Veterinary
URI
https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14018/26993
Abstract
Effective communication crucially depends on the ability to produce and recognize structured signals, as apparent in language and birdsong. Although it is not clear to what extent similar syntactic-like abilities can be identified in other animals, recently we reported that domestic chicks can learn abstract visual patterns and the statistical structure defined by a temporal sequence of visual shapes. However, little is known about chicks’ ability to process spatial/positional information from visual configurations. Here, we used filial imprinting as an unsupervised learning mechanism to study spontaneous encoding of the structure of a configuration of different shapes. After being exposed to a triplet of shapes (ABC or CAB), chicks could discriminate those triplets from a permutation of the same shapes in different order (CAB or ABC), revealing a sensitivity to the spatial arrangement of the elements. When tested with a fragment taken from the imprinting triplet that followed the familiar adjacency-relationships (AB or BC) vs. one in which the shapes maintained their position with respect to the stimulus edges (AC), chicks revealed a preference for the configuration with familiar edge elements, showing an edge bias previously found only with temporal sequences.
Topic
Publisher
Place of Publication
Type
Journal article
Date
2018-08
Language
ISBN
Identifiers
10.3390/ani8080135