How do small-brained, highly mobile animals like birds so readily perceive the visual world? Despite the computational complexity of vision, recent behavioral tests have suggested that these evolutionarily distant animals may use visual mechanisms that operate in the same manner as the visual mechanisms of primates. This article reviews new evidence regarding the processes of early vision and object perception in pigeons and considers speculations about the similarities and differences between avian and primate visual cognition.
AllanS.E.BloughD.S. (1989). Feature-based search asymmetries in pigeons and humans.Perception & Psychophysics, 46, 456–464.
2.
CookR.G.CavotoB.R.KatzJ.S.CavotoK.K. (1997). Pigeon perception and discrimination of rapidly changing texture stimuli.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, 23, 390–400.
3.
CookR.G.CavotoK.K.CavotoB.R. (1996). Mechanisms of multidimensional grouping, fusion, and search in avian texture discrimination.Animal Learning & Behavior, 24, 150–167.
4.
CookR.G.KatzJ.S. (1999). Dynamic object perception in pigeons.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, 25, 194–210.
5.
HollardV.D.DeliusJ.D. (1982). Rotational invariance in visual pattern recognition by pigeons and humans.Science, 218, 804–806.
6.
TreismanA.GeladeG. (1980). A feature-integration theory of attention.Cognitive Psychology, 12, 97–136.
7.
WolfeJ.M.CaveK.R.FranzelS.L. (1989). Guided search: An alternative to the feature-integration model for visual search.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 15, 419–433.
8.
ZeiglerH.P.BischofH.J. (1993). Vision, brain, and behavior in birds. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
