title: Analogical reasoning in amazons.
abstract: Two juvenile orange-winged amazons (Amazona amazonica) were initially trained to match visual stimuli by color, shape, and number of items, but not by size. After learning these three identity matching-to-sample tasks, the parrots transferred discriminative responding to new stimuli from the same categories that had been used in training (other colors, shapes, and numbers of items) as well as to stimuli from a different category (stimuli varying in size). In the critical testing phase, both parrots exhibited reliable relational matching-to-sample (RMTS) behavior, suggesting that they perceived and compared the relationship between objects in the sample stimulus pair to the relationship between objects in the comparison stimulus pairs, even though no physical matches were possible between items in the sample and comparison pairs. The parrots spontaneously exhibited this higher-order relational responding without having ever before been trained on RMTS tasks, therefore joining apes and crows in displaying this abstract cognitive behavior.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, 119899, Russia. obozovat@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Tanya
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Obozova
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, 119899, Russia.
authors.forename: Anna
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Smirnova
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, 119899, Russia.
authors.forename: Zoya
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Zorina
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, E11 Seashore Hall, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, 52242, USA. ed-wasserman@uiowa.edu.
authors.forename: Edward
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Wasserman
mesh_terms: D046708:Amazona / Q000502:physiology*; D000818:Animals; D002755:Choice Behavior; D003210:Concept Formation; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological; D005260:Female; D008297:Male; D013850:Thinking
keywords: Analogical reasoning; Identity matching-to-sample; Orange-winged amazons (Amazona amazonica); Relational matching-to-sample