Szabo, Birgit; Noble, Daniel W A; Whiting, Martin J (2021). Learning Simple and Compound Stimuli in a Social Lizard (Egernia stokesii). Journal of comparative psychology, 135(2), pp. 208-218. American Psychological Association 10.1037/com0000260
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Learning_Simple_and_Compound_Stimuli_in_a_Social_Lizard__Egernia_stokesii_.pdf - Published Version Restricted to registered users only Available under License Publisher holds Copyright. Download (722kB) |
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Discrimination_learning_in_a_lizard.pdf - Accepted Version Available under License Publisher holds Copyright. Download (746kB) | Preview |
We tested learning and behavioral flexibility in family-living gidgee skinks (Egernia stokesii) using a multistage visual discrimination task that included acquisition and reversal stages using simple and compound stimuli composed of black shapes superimposed on a colored background. We evaluated how lizards learn compound cues through a probe test. Lizards showed behavioral flexibility through reversal learning using simple stimuli (only color or shape). Our lizards used compound stimuli to learn a discrimination but had problems reversing and generalizing across novel compound stimuli. In the probe test, lizards chose the correct stimulus in a novel pairing with a distractor feature even without previous experience with compound stimuli. Our results suggest that some lizards are likely able to attend selectively to the relevant features of our compound stimuli while ignoring irrelevant features instead of using the configuration of a cue card as a whole to learn to discriminate between compound stimuli. We hope that our work will spark interest in further studies looking at how lizards (and reptiles in general)
learn to solve visual discrimination problems.
Item Type: |
Journal Article (Original Article) |
|---|---|
Division/Institute: |
08 Faculty of Science > Department of Biology > Institute of Ecology and Evolution (IEE) 08 Faculty of Science > Department of Biology > Institute of Ecology and Evolution (IEE) > Behavioural Ecology |
UniBE Contributor: |
Szabo, Birgit |
Subjects: |
500 Science > 570 Life sciences; biology 500 Science > 590 Animals (Zoology) |
ISSN: |
0735-7036 |
Publisher: |
American Psychological Association |
Funders: |
[UNSPECIFIED] Australian Society of Herpetologists ; [UNSPECIFIED] Macquarie University |
Language: |
English |
Submitter: |
Birgit Szabo |
Date Deposited: |
01 Apr 2021 11:34 |
Last Modified: |
27 Apr 2023 14:32 |
Publisher DOI: |
10.1037/com0000260 |
PubMed ID: |
33464106 |
BORIS DOI: |
10.7892/boris.153055 |
URI: |
https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/153055 |
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