Configural processing enables discrimination and categorization of face-like stimuli in honeybees.
We studied whether honeybees can distinguish face-like configurations by using standardized stimuli commonly employed in primate and human visual research. Furthermore, we studied whether, irrespective of their capacity to distinguish between face-like stimuli, bees learn to classify visual stimuli built up of the same elements in face-like versus non-face-like categories. We showed that bees succeeded in discriminating both face-like and non-face-like stimuli and categorized appropriately novel stimuli in these two classes. To this end, they used configural information and not just isolated features or low-level cues. Bees looked for a specific configuration in which each feature had to be located in an appropriate spatial relationship with respect to the others, thus showing sensitivity for first-order relationships between features. Although faces are biologically irrelevant stimuli for bees, the fact that they were able to integrate visual features into complex representations suggests that face-like stimulus categorization can occur even in the absence of brain regions specialized in face processing.
Avarguès-Weber
A
A
Université de Toulouse, UPS, Centre de Recherches sur la Cognition Animale, 118 route de Narbonne, F-31062 Toulouse Cedex 9, France.
Portelli
G
G
Benard
J
J
Dyer
A
A
Giurfa
M
M
D000818:Animals; D001516:Bees / Q000502:physiology*; D003463:Cues; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D005145:Face; D006801:Humans; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual