Transfer of a discrimination by pigeons (Columba livia) between pictured locations and the represented environments.

In Experiment 1, pigeons (Columba livia) were trained in a successive slide presentation procedure to discriminate between pictures of 2 ends of a room and then trained to find food in the actual room. A congruent-transfer (CT) group learned the spatial discrimination more quickly than an incongruent-transfer (IT) group. In Experiment 2's replication we used a simultaneous slide presentation procedure and added a control group. The IT group required significantly more trials than the CT or control groups. In Experiment 3, order of the training conditions was reversed. CT and IT conditions had no effect on the speed of acquisition of the discrimination. This indicates that pigeons acquire a representation of spatial locations from pictures, which can then direct behavior, but the direction of transfer observed was unidirectional. This suggests that a discrimination between spatial locations may not be accurately represented in pictorial form.