A visual familiarity account of evidence for orthographic processing in pigeons (Columbia livia): a reply to Scarf, Corballis, Güntürkün, and Colombo (2017)

Animal Cognition
John R VokeyScott W Allen

Abstract

Scarf et al. (Proc Natl Acad Sci 113(40):11272-11276, 2016) demonstrated that pigeons, as with baboons (Grainger et al. in Science 336(6078):245-248, 2012; Ziegler in Psychol Sci. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797612474322 , 2013), can be trained to display several behavioural hallmarks of human orthographic processing. But, Vokey and Jamieson (Psychol Sci 25(4):991-996, 2014) demonstrated that a standard, autoassociative neural network model of memory applied to pixel maps of the words and nonwords reproduces all of those results. In a subsequent report, Scarf et al. (Anim Cognit 20(5):999-1002, 2017) demonstrated that pigeons can reproduce one more marker of human orthographic processing: the ability to discriminate visually presented four-letter words from their mirror-reversed counterparts (e.g. "LEFT" vs. " "). The current report shows that the model of Vokey and Jamieson (2014) reproduces the results of Scarf et al. (2017) and reinforces the original argument: the recent results thought to support a conclusion of orthographic processing in pigeons and baboons are consistent with but do not force that conclusion.

References

Jul 15, 2004·Journal of Comparative Psychology·John R VokeyFrans B M de Waal
Sep 1, 2004·Consciousness and Cognition·John R Vokey, Philip A Higham
Nov 8, 2006·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·Joël Fagot, Robert G Cook
Nov 27, 2008·The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology : QJEP·John R VokeySimon A Cole
Dec 21, 2011·The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology : QJEP·John R Vokey, William E Hockley
Apr 14, 2012·Science·Michael L Platt, Geoffrey K Adams
Apr 14, 2012·Science·Jonathan GraingerJoël Fagot
Jun 13, 2013·Psychological Science·Johannes C ZieglerJonathan Grainger
Jan 1, 1991·Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience·M Turk, A Pentland
Jan 15, 2014·PloS One·Thomas HannaganJonathan Grainger
Feb 8, 2014·Psychological Science·John R Vokey, Randall K Jamieson
Sep 18, 2016·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·Damian ScarfMichael Colombo
Jul 15, 2017·Animal Cognition·Damian ScarfMichael Colombo
Sep 1, 2017·PloS One·Maja LinkeHarald Baayen

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