Factors influencing scene gist categorization by pigeons

Scene gist categorization in humans is rapid and accurate and appears to be tuned to the fundamental statistical regularities in the visual world. Although pigeons have been reported to form many types of categorical judgments, little research has examined scene categorization by pigeons. Experiment 1 tested whether pigeons were able to recognize scenes with brief exposure times. The pigeons successfully discriminated between two natural scene categories or a natural vs. a man-made category and transferred their discrimination to novel exemplars. Subsequently, the birds successfully transferred their gist discrimination to durations in the 200-350 ms range. This indicates that birds are capable of rapid scene categorization, but they require more stimulus exposure than humans. Experiment 2 examined the effect of viewpoint on gist categorization by testing performance with aerial and ground-based views. The pigeons showed a tendency to perform better to aerial views, in comparison to humans who perform better with ground-based views. Possible sources of the difference in gist categorization processes between pigeons and humans are discussed

Broadening the horizons of scene gist recognition: aerial and ground-based views

Numerous studies in the last decade have used ground-based views of scenes to investigate the process of scene gist recognition. Conversely, few if any studies have investigated scene gist recognition of aerial (i.e., satellite) views. This study asks the question, how much of what we know about scene gist recognition from ground-based views directly translates to aerial views? Fifty-two participants were randomly assigned to Aerial and Ground-based conditions, with processing times (SOA) and scene categories varied within-subjects. Stimuli were monochrome photographs from 10 categories: 5 Natural: coast, desert, forest, mountain, river; 5 Man-made: airport, city, golf-course, residential, stadium. Aerial images were from Google Earth©. Both target and mask images were presented for 24 ms, with SOAs of 24-94 ms plus a no-mask condition. Participants then chose between all 10 categories. As predicted, ground-based views were recognized more accurately than aerial views. However, contrary to predictions, aerial view recognition did not benefit more from additional processing time than ground-based view recognition. Aerial view performance with no mask was worse than ground-based view performance at 24 ms SOA. Thus, gist perception of aerial views is more data (information) limited than resource (time) limited, perhaps because they are “accidental views” (Biederman, 1987). An additional analysis collapsed all 10 basic level categories into 2 superordinate level “Natural” and “Man-made” categories. For ground-based views, Natural categories were consistently high, whereas Man-made categories benefited from additional processing time. However, for aerial views, both Natural and Man-made categories benefited equally from additional processing time. Nevertheless, confusion matrices for the 10 basic level categories and responses showed a correlation of .80 across the Aerial and Ground-based views, suggesting that discriminability between categories is similar across aerial and ground-based views. Further research will investigate what information both aerial and ground-based views contain, and what information aerial views lack

Factors influencing scene gist categorization by pigeons

Scene gist categorization in humans is rapid and accurate and appears to be tuned to the fundamental statistical regularities in the visual world. Although pigeons have been reported to form many types of categorical judgments, little research has examined scene categorization by pigeons. Experiment 1 tested whether pigeons were able to recognize scenes with brief exposure times. The pigeons successfully discriminated between two natural scene categories or a natural vs. a man-made category and transferred their discrimination to novel exemplars. Subsequently, the birds successfully transferred their gist discrimination to durations in the 200-350 ms range. This indicates that birds are capable of rapid scene categorization, but they require more stimulus exposure than humans. Experiment 2 examined the effect of viewpoint on gist categorization by testing performance with aerial and ground-based views. The pigeons showed a tendency to perform better to aerial views, in comparison to humans who perform better with ground-based views. Possible sources of the difference in gist categorization processes between pigeons and humans are discussed.</p

Scene gist categorization in pigeons

Scene gist categorization in humans is rapid and accurate and appears to be tuned to fundamental statistical regularities in the visual world. Although pigeons have been reported to form many types of categorical judgments, little research has examined scene categorization by pigeons or the underlying mechanisms of it. The present study trained eight pigeons on a scene gist categorization task using a go/no-go procedure. Four birds were trained to discriminate between two natural categories (beach vs. mountain) and four were trained to discriminate between a natural (beach) and a man-made (street) category. The birds successfully learned both categorization tasks at a similar rate and to a high degree of accuracy (>80%). During a subsequent generalization test with novel images, strong transfer of discrimination was observed with only a modest generalization decrement. Finally, the birds were trained with progressively shorter stimulus durations (beginning with the original 5-sec duration and decreasing to less than 1 sec) to determine if they could still form a discrimination with limited visual information as with humans. Decreasing durations initially negatively affected performance, but over time the pigeons recovered and formed discriminations with stimulus presentations in the 200-500 ms range. The results indicate that, like humans, pigeons can form rapid scene gist categorization judgments. However, the visual information critical for these judgments remains to be determined

Scene gist categorization in pigeons

Scene gist categorization in humans is rapid and accurate and appears to be tuned to fundamental statistical regularities in the visual world. Although pigeons have been reported to form many types of categorical judgments, little research has examined scene categorization by pigeons or the underlying mechanisms of it. The present study trained eight pigeons on a scene gist categorization task using a go/no-go procedure. Four birds were trained to discriminate between two natural categories (beach vs. mountain) and four were trained to discriminate between a natural (beach) and a man-made (street) category. The birds successfully learned both categorization tasks at a similar rate and to a high degree of accuracy (>80%). During a subsequent generalization test with novel images, strong transfer of discrimination was observed with only a modest generalization decrement. Finally, the birds were trained with progressively shorter stimulus durations (beginning with the original 5-sec duration and decreasing to less than 1 sec) to determine if they could still form a discrimination with limited visual information as with humans. Decreasing durations initially negatively affected performance, but over time the pigeons recovered and formed discriminations with stimulus presentations in the 200-500 ms range. The results indicate that, like humans, pigeons can form rapid scene gist categorization judgments. However, the visual information critical for these judgments remains to be determined.</p