ORCID Profile
0000-0001-7405-9791
Current Organisation
University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna
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Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 12-07-2016
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Date: 2014
DOI: 10.1037/A0033272
Abstract: The ability to represent hidden objects plays an important role in the survival of many species. In order to provide an inclusive synopsis of the current benchmark tasks used to test object permanence in animals for a psittacine representative, we tested eight Goffin cockatoos (Cacatua goffini) on Stages 3-6 of Piagetian object permanence as well as derivations of spatial transposition, rotation, and translocation tasks. Subjects instantly solved visible displacement 3b and 4a but showed an extended plateau for solving Stage 5a at a very late age (10 months). Subjects readily solved most invisible displacement tasks including double hidings and four angles (90°, 180°, 270°, and 360°) of rotation and translocations at high performance levels, although Piagetian Stage 6 invisible displacement tasks caused more difficulties for the animals than transposition, rotations, and translocation tasks.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 11-2012
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 19-12-2022
DOI: 10.1111/ETH.13351
Abstract: The ability to gain information from one situation, acquire new skills and/or perfect existing ones, and subsequently apply them to a new situation is a key element in behavioural flexibility and a hallmark of innovation. A flexible agent is expected to store these skills and apply them to contexts different from that in which learning occurred. Goffin's cockatoos ( Cacatua goffiniana ) are highly innovative parrots renowned for their problem‐solving and tool‐using skills and are thus excellent candidates to study this phenomenon. We hypothesized that birds allowed to use a tool in a larger variety of contingencies would acquire a broader expertise in handling it, facilitating its transfer to new tasks. In our study, we compared the performance of two groups of captive Goffin's cockatoos ( N = 13): A test group received more erse learning and motor experiences on multiple applications of a hook‐type tool, while a control group received intensive, total trial‐matched, experience with a single application of the same tool. Then, both groups were tested on two novel tasks to determine whether experience with the tool in multiple contexts would facilitate performance during transfer. While both groups transferred to both novel tasks, group differences in performance were apparent, particularly in the second transfer task, where test birds achieved a higher success rate and reached criteria within fewer trials than control birds. These results provide support for the prediction that experiencing a erse range of contingencies with a tool appears to allow birds to acquire generalizable knowledge and transferrable skills to tackle an untrained problem more efficiently. In contrast, intensive experience with the tool in a single context might have made control birds less flexible and more fixated on previously learned tool‐dependent instances.
Location: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
No related grants have been discovered for Alice Auersperg.