Hostname: page-component-74656f9884-8r8nv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-08T11:40:49.455Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Hooded Crows Solve a Transitive Inference Problem Cognitively

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 January 2023

O F Lazareva ,
A A Smirnova ,
Z A Zorina  and
V V Rayevsky
O F Lazareva*
Affiliation:
Institute of Higher Nervous Activity, Moscow, Russia
A A Smirnova
Affiliation:
Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia
Z A Zorina
Affiliation:
Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia
V V Rayevsky
Affiliation:
Institute of Higher Nervous Activity, Moscow, Russia
*
† Contact for correspondence and requests for reprints at: Department of Higher Nervous Activity, Faculty of Biology, Moscow State University, Vorobjevi gori, Moscow 117899, Russia
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

We investigated the ability of hooded crows to form transitive inferences. Subjects were trained to discriminate a series of overlapping pairs of stimuli: A+ B-, B+ C-, C+ D-, D+ E, where the letters stood for colour stimuli and plus and minus for rewarded or non-rewarded choices. The stimuli were cards of different colours with a circle of the same colour on the reverse side and diameters decreased from A to E. To preclude an influence of the reinforcement history on choices with the test pair BD, an overcompensation phase was instituted after training. It consisted of the presentation of all training pairs with frequencies selected so that the reward to non-reward ratios for stimulus D would be between 1.5 and 2.0 times greater than for B. If, during the BD test, the bird chose the stimuli according to these ratios they should prefer D. If they chose according to diameter relation they should prefer B. During these tests, the crows strongly preferred B over D (83.1%). In a second experiment, subjects were trained with the same procedure except that the diameters of the circles were all the same. During this test, the performance of two crows was not significantly different from chance level (53.1%), and the other two crows preferred D (80.0%). We conclude that crows can solve transitivity tests using cognitive mechanisms if they are offered additional information (in this case circle diameter) which, presumably, allows them to represent the relevant stimuli in an ordered series.

Keywords

animal welfarehooded crowtransitive inferencevisual discrimination

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Animal Welfare , Volume 10 , Issue S1: Consciousness, Cognition and Animal Welfare: Proceedings of the UFAW Symposium, Zoological Society of London, 11-12 May 2000 , February 2001 , pp. S219 - S231
Copyright
© 2001 Universities Federation for Animal Welfare

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Boysen, S T, Berntsen, G G, Shreyer, T A and Quigley, K S 1993 Processing of ordinality and transitivity by chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). Journal of Comparative Psychology 107: 208–215CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bryant, P E and Trabasso, T 1971 Transitive inferences and memory in young children. Nature 232: 456–458CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Couvillon, P A and Bitterman, M E 1992 A conventional conditioning analysis of ‘transitive inference’. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes 18: 308–310Google Scholar
Davis, H 1992 Transitive inference in rats (Rattus norvegicus). Journal of Comparative Psychology 106: 342–349CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
de, Waal F B M 1977 The organization of agonistic relations within two captive groups of Java monkeys (Macaca fascicularis). Zeitschrift für Tierpsychologie 44: 225–282Google Scholar
Evans, J S B T, Newstead, S E and Byrne, R M J 1993 Human Reasoning: the Psychology of Deduction. Lawrence Erlbaum Ass: Hillsdale, USAGoogle Scholar
Gillan, D J 1981 Reasoning in the chimpanzee: II. Transitive inference. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes 7: 150–164Google Scholar
Harris, M R and McGonigle, B 1994 A model of transitive inference. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 47B: 319-348Google Scholar
Kamil, A C 1985 The evolution of higher learning abilities in birds. In: Iljichev (ed) Acta XVIII International Ornithological Congress (Moscow ¡982) pp 811–818. Nauka: Moscow, RussiaGoogle Scholar
Karten, H J 1991 Homology and evolutionary origins of the ‘neocortex’. Brain, Behaviour and Evolution 38: 264–272CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Koehler, O 1950 The ability of birds to ‘count’. Bulletin of Animal Behavior 9: 41–45Google Scholar
Krushinsky, L V 1990 Experimental Studies of Elementary Reasoning: Evolutionary, Physiological and Genetic Aspects of Behavior. Calcutta Oxonian Press Pvt Ltd: New Delhi, IndiaGoogle Scholar
Kummer, H 1982 Social knowledge in free-ranging primates. In: Griffin, D R (ed) Animal Mind - Human Mind. Springer Verlag: Berlin, GermanyGoogle Scholar
Mackintosh, N J 1988 Approaches to the study of animal intelligence. British Journal of Psychology 79: 509–525CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McGonigle, B and Chalmers, M 1977 Are monkeys logical? Nature 267: 694–696CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Medina, L and Reiner, A 2000 Do birds possess homologues of mammalian primary visual, somatosensory and motor cortices? Trends in Neurosciences 23: 1–12CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Obukhov, D K 1995 Organization of the neuronal complexes in the neocortical formation of the bird telencephalon. Abstracts of IY IBRO World Congress in Neurosciences ρ 404. Tokyo, JapanGoogle Scholar
Rapp, P R, Kansky, M T and Eichenbaum, H 1996 Learning and memory for hierarchical relationships in the monkey: effects of aging. Behavioral Neurosciences 110: 887–897CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Roberts, W A and Phelps, M T 1994 Transitive inference in rats: a test of the spatial coding hypothesis. Psychological Science 5: 368–374CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rowell, T 1974 The concept of social dominance. Behavioral Biology 11: 131–154CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Siemann, M and Delius, J D 1998 Algebraic learning and neural network models for transitive and nontransitive responding. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology 10: 307–334Google Scholar
Stingelin, W 1958 Comparative Study of Cytoarchitectonique of Bird Telencephalon. Lichtenhahn Pubi: Basle, SwitzerlandGoogle Scholar
Treichler, F R and van, Tilburg D 1996 Concurrent conditional discrimination tests of transitive inference by macaque monkeys: list linking. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes 22: 105–117Google ScholarPubMed
von, Fersen L, Wynne, C D L, Delius, J D and Staddon, J E R 1991 Transitive inference formation in pigeons. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes 17: 334–341Google Scholar
Wilson, B, Mackintosh, N J and Boakes, R A 1985 Transfer of relational rules in matching and oddity learning by pigeons and corvids. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 37B: 313-332CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wynne, C D L 1995 Reinforcement account for transitive inference performance. Animal Learning and Behaviour 23: 207–217CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zentall, T R and Sherburne, L M 1994 Transfer of value from S+ to S- in a simultaneous discrimination. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes 20: 176–183Google Scholar
Zorina, Z A 1997 Reasoning in birds. Physiology and General Biology Reviews 11: 1–47Google Scholar
Zorina, Z A, Kalinina, T S and Markina, N V 1996 Capacity of birds for transitive inference: the solution of the Gillan test by corvids and pigeons. Neuroscience and Behavioral Physiology 26: 454–459CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed