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Abstract

A technique similar to that used by Yager was developed which permits economical behavioral assessment of visual discriminations in the goldfish, Carassius auratus. 4 large goldfish ran approximately 50 trials per day on a horizontal-vertical discrimination using this technique. Investigation of the discrimination of single versus redundant stimuli confirmed earlier findings of Sutherland and extended those findings by showing good discrimination of small stimuli after hundreds of trials. A subsequent experiment in which stimulus size was varied systematically suggested that the length of the stimulus is more important than its width and that if the ratio of length to width is held constant, the discrimination is a function, within limits, of over-all stimulus size.

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An Improved Experimental Situation for Studying Visual Psychophysics in the Goldfish,with Data on Discrimination of the Vertical

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