title: Use of position and feature cues in discrimination learning by the whiptail lizard (Cnemidophorus inornatus).
abstract: Animals use a variety of cue types to locate and discriminate objects. The ease with which particular cue types are learned varies across species and context. An enormous literature contains comparisons of spatial cue use to use of other cue types, but few experiments examine the ease with which various nonspatial cues are learned. In addition, few studies have examined cue use in reptiles. Thus, the authors compared whiptail lizards' (Cnemidophorus inornatus) ability to learn and reverse a discrimination using either position (left or right) or visual feature cues. Lizards learned and reversed the task using position cues faster and with greater accuracy than using feature cues.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA.
authors.forename: Lainy Baird
authors.initials: LB
authors.lastname: Day
authors.forename: Nyla
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Ismail
authors.forename: Walter
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Wilczynski
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001522:Behavior, Animal; D002755:Choice Behavior; D003071:Cognition; D003118:Color Perception; D003463:Cues; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D008116:Lizards; D008297:Male; D011897:Random Allocation; D014796:Visual Perception