Psychology Commons^™

Review Of Bird Brain: An Exploration Of Avian Intelligence By Nathan Emery, Alan B. Bond

Avian Cognition Papers

Over the past 30 years, the study of bird behavior has been completely transformed by the ongoing revolution in cognitive psychology, opening up wholly new perspectives on the mental processes underlying such areas as foraging decisions, social intelligence, problem solving, memory encoding, and communication. Although these studies have contributed to a number of recent popular books, until now there has been no attempt to integrate avian cognition and recent findings in avian neuroanatomy and endocrinology into a single account that is attractive and accessible to a general readership. It is a steep challenge, but Nathan Emery has undertaken it in …

Context-Dependent Seed Dispersal By A Scatter-Hoarding Corvid, Mario B. Pesendorfer, T. Scott Sillett, Scott A. Morrison, Alan C. Kamil

Avian Cognition Papers

1. Corvids (crows, jays, magpies and nutcrackers) are important dispersers of large-seeded plants. Studies on captive or supplemented birds suggest that they flexibly adjust their scatter-hoarding behavior to the context of social dynamics and relative seed availability. Because many corvid-dispersed trees show high annual variation in seed production, context-dependent foraging can have strong effects on natural corvid scatter-hoarding behavior.

2. We investigated how seed availability and social dynamics affected scatter-hoarding in the island scrub jays (Aphelocoma insularis). We quantified rates of scatter-hoarding behavior and territorial defense of 26 colormarked birds over a three-year period with variable acorn crops. …

Eurasian Jays Predict The Food Preferences Of Their Mates, Alan C. Kamil

Avian Cognition Papers

The cognitive abilities of animals continue to fascinate both scientists and nonscientists. Although the abilities of the primates, our closest living relatives, generally attract most interest, several different lines of research have demonstrated high levels of intellectual capacity in birds, particularly corvids. The members of this family are known for their large brains and have performed well in many cognitive tasks using different paradigms (1–3). This finding has led to substantial revision of thinking about avian intelligence, including the suggestion of convergence in the evolution of cognitive abilities between corvids and primates (4). In PNAS, Ostojić et al. (5) add …

Changing Room Cues Reduces The Effects Of Proactive Interference In Clark’S Nutcrackers, Nucifraga Columbiana, Jody L. Lewis, Alan C. Kamil, Kate E. Webbink

Avian Cognition Papers

To determine what factors are important for minimizing interference effects in spatial memory, Clark’s Nutcrackers, Nucifraga columbiana were tested for their spatial memory for two serial lists of locations per day. In this experiment two unique landmark sets were either different between List 1 and List 2 or the same. We found that Nutcrackers were most susceptible to interference when the landmark sets were the same. This study suggests that repeatedly testing animal memory in the same room, with the same cues, can hamper recall due to interference.

Differences In Relative Hippocampus Volume And Number Of Hippocampus Neurons Among Five Corvid Species, Kristy L. Gould, Karl E. Gilbertson, Andrew J. Hrvol, Joseph C. Nelson, Abigail L. Seyfer, Rose M. Brantner, Alan C. Kamil

Avian Cognition Papers

The relative size of the avian hippocampus (Hp) has been shown to be related to spatial memory and food storing in two avian families, the parids and corvids. Basil et al. [Brain Behav Evol 1996;47: 156-164] examined North American food-storing birds in the corvid family and found that Clark’s nutcrackers had a larger relative Hp than pinyon jays and Western scrub jays. These results correlated with the nutcracker’s better performance on most spatial memory tasks and their strong reliance on stored food in the wild. However, Pravosudov and de Kort [Brain Behav Evol 67 (2006), 1-9] raised questions …

Do Clark’S Nutcrackers Demonstrate What-Where-When Memory On A Cache-Recovery Task?, Kristy L. Gould, Amy J. Ort, Alan C. Kamil

Avian Cognition Papers

What-where-when (WWW) memory during cache recovery was investigated in six Clark’s nutcrackers. During caching, both red- and blue-colored pine seeds were cached by the birds in holes filled with sand. Either a short (3 day) retention interval (RI) or a long (9 day) RI was followed by a recovery session during which caches were replaced with either a single seed or wooden bead depending upon the color of the cache and length of the retention interval. Knowledge of what was in the cache (seed or bead), where it was located, and when the cache had been made (3 or 9 …

Effects Of Gregariousness, Conspicuousness, And Novelty On Blue Jay (Cyanocitta Cristata) Learned Avoidance And Stimulus Generalization Of Unpalatable Prey, Joyce M. Dykema

Avian Cognition Papers

I examined a variety of factors hypothesized to be important in the evolution and maintenance of aposematism. Aposematism occurs when prey individuals advertise their toxic or otherwise aversive nature to potential predators via evolved conspicuous signals. I conducted three experiments in which blue jays (Cyanocitta cristata) were allowed to search a printed grayscale pixilated background for grayscale pixilated moths in an open room. I manipulated moth appearance and food reward, and recorded jay predation on the varying moth stimuli. In my first experiment, I repeated Alatalo & Mappes’ (1996) study examining the effects of prey gregariousness, or grouping, …

K-Means Clustering With Multiresolution Peak Detection, Guanshan Yu, Leen-Kiat Soh, Alan B. Bond

Avian Cognition Papers

Clustering is a practical data mining approach of pattern detection. Because of the sensitivity of initial conditions, k-means clustering often suffers from low clustering performance. We present a procedure to refine initial conditions of k-means clustering by analyzing density distributions of a data set before estimating the number of clusters k necessary for the data set, as well as the positions of the initial centroids of the clusters. We demonstrate that this approach indeed improves the accuracy and performance of k-means clustering measured by average intra to interclustering error ratio. This method is applied to the virtual ecology project to …

The Effect Of Proximity On Landmark Use In Clark’S Nutcrackers, Kristy L. Gould-Beierle, Alan Kamil

Avian Cognition Papers

Clark’s nutcrackers, Nucifraga columbiana, store thousands of pine seeds during the autumn and retrieve them throughout the winter. It has been shown that these birds are able to use visual cues to relocate hidden food in the laboratory. In this set of experiments, we trained three groups of Clark’s nutcrackers to find a hidden food goal that was placed in the same spatial location relative to the testing room. During training, the location of two local cues in relation to the goal differed between the three groups. Group 1 learned the task with the cues closest to the goal, group …

Patterns Of Movement And Orientation During Caching And Recovery By Clark’S Nutcrackers, Nucifraga Columbiana, Alan Kamil, Russell P. Balda, Sally Good

Avian Cognition Papers

Clark’s nutcrackers regularly store large numbers of pine seeds and remember the locations of the cached seeds. Although they are very accurate, they do make some errors during recovery. In an attempt to determine whether any behaviours during caching predicted the occurrence of errors during recovery, we videotaped Clark’s nutcrackers while they cached and recovered seeds under laboratory conditions. We used the videotapes to develop complete, quantitative descriptions of caching and recovery behaviour, with an emphasis on body orientation and directions of movement. During caching, the birds showed the greatest change in their orientation and direction following cache creation. During …

How Do They, Indeed? A Reply To Biegler Et Al., Alan Kamil, Juli E. Jones

Avian Cognition Papers

We trained Clark’s nutcrackers, Nucifraga columbiana, to search halfway between two landmarks while varying the distance between the landmarks (Kamil & Jones 1997). We found that the birds learned the problem readily and generalized to novel interlandmark distances within the range of distances used during training. Unlike some other studies in which responses to proportional distance were obtained (e.g. O’Keefe & Burgess 1996; Tommasi et al. 1997), the nutcrackers showed very precise search and maintained this precision during the transfer test. The distributions of digging locations around the central position were concentrated within ±1–2 cm of the central location …

The Ecology Of Foraging Behavior: Implications For Animal Learning And Memory, Alan Kamil, Herbert L. Roitblat

Avian Cognition Papers

In his recent Annual Review of Psychology article, Snowdon (1983) discussed the synthesis of ethology and comparative psychology. A similar synthesis of behavioral ecology and animal learning is beginning to take place. This article reviews developments in the behavioral ecology and ethology of foraging behavior relevant to psychological research on animal learning. The psychological literature shows that animals possess a wide range of learning abilities, including “simple” classical and operant conditioning; they acquire spatial, nonspatial, and temporal discriminations; they exhibit various forms of rule learning (e.g. matching-to-sample and learning set), and may even in certain senses learn language. Why does …

Optimal Foraging Theory And The Psychology Of Learning, Alan Kamil

Avian Cognition Papers

The development of optimization theory has made important contributions to the study of animal behavior. But the optimization approach needs to be integrated with other methods of ethology and psychology. For example, the ability to learn is an important component of efficient foraging behavior in many species, and the psychology of animal learning could contribute substantially to testing and extending the predictions of optimal foraging theory.

Spatial Learning As An Adaptation In Hummingbirds, Susan Cole, F. Reed Hainsworth, Alan Kamil, Terre Mercier, Larry L. Wolf

Avian Cognition Papers

An ecological approach based on food distribution suggests that hummingbirds should more easily learn to visit a flower in a new location than to learn to return to a flower in a position just visited, for a food reward. Experimental results support this hypothesis as well as the general view that differences in learning within and among species represent adaptations.

Visual Detection Of Cryptic Prey By Blue Jays (Cyanocitta Cristata), Alexandra T. Pietrewicz, Alan Kamil

Avian Cognition Papers

Blue jays learned to respond differentially to the presence or absence of Catocala moths in slides. This detection of the moths by the jays was affected by the background upon which the moth was placed and its body orientation, thus providing an objective measure of crypticity. These procedures are useful for the study of visual detection of prey.

The Role Of Adventitious Reinforcement In Operant Discrimination, Alan Kamil, John W. Davenport

Avian Cognition Papers

Rats were trained in 2 S^D-S^Δ discrimination experiments in which the effects of an S^D-postponement contingency during S^Δ and temporal regularity of S^Δ duration were assessed. Experiment I showed that discrimination is markedly facilitated by the presence of an S^D-postponement contingency of either fixed or variable duration. Experiment II showed that variable-duration S^Δ periods in a noncontingent schedule can also greatly enhance formation of an operant discrimination. These effects were attributed to differences in the probability of adventitious reinforcement of S^Δ behavior by S^D events.