Cognitive Aspects of Stimulus Control

The study of discrimination and generalization in animals traditionally involves stimuli that are simple, uniform, and restricted in time or space. In recent years, the area of stimulus control has been expanded with the use of stimuli that are complex, extended in time or space, and incorporate or represent natural objects, events, or locations. The contributors to this unique volume have emphasized controlling functions of complex stimulus events -- such as location or duration -- and their relation to cognitive processes in animals. The chapters cover a wide array of topics, including spatial cognition, categorization, pattern perception, numerosity discriminations, imagery, and spatial tracking, thereby addressing the question of how complex events are perceived, processed, and organized. This volume goes beyond other recent books on animal cognition in that it specifically places some well-known phenomena within the context of stimulus control.

Contents: J.G. Fetterman, D.A. Stubbs, D. MacEwen, The Perception of the Extended Stimulus. L.R. Dreyfus, Absolute and Relational Control in a Temporal Comparison Task. M.L. Spetch, B. Rusak, Time Present and Time Past. K. Cheng, Three Psychophysical Principles in the Processing of Spatial and Temporal Information. D.M. Wilkie, R.J. Wilson, S.E. MacDonald, Animals' Perception and Memory for Places. D.F. Kendrick, Pigeon's Concept of Experienced and Nonexperienced Real-World Locations: Discrimination and Generalization Across Seasonal Variations. W.A. Roberts, M.T. Phelps, G.B. Schacter, Stimulus Control of Central Place Foraging on the Radial Maze. B.C. Rakitin, N.L. Dallal, W.H. Meck, Spatial Memory Structure and Capacity: Influences on Problem-Solving and Memory-Coding Strategies. D.F. Sherry, Landmarks, the Hippocampus, and Spatial Search in Food-Storing Birds. E.A. Wasserman, R.S. Bhatt, Conceptualization of Natural and Artificial Stimuli by Pigeons. A.A. Wright, The Study of Animal Cognitive Processes. R. Weisman, L. Ratcliffe, The Perception of Pitch Constancy in Bird Songs. D.S. Blough, Features of Forms in Pigeon Perception. R.G. Cook, The Visual Perception and Processing of Textures by Pigeons. W.K. Honig, Emergent Properties of Complex Arrays. J.J. Neiworth, Cognitive Aspects of Movement Estimations: A Test of Imagery in Animals. M. Rilling, An Ecological Approach to Stimulus Control and Tracking. S.T. Boysen, Counting as the Chimpanzee Views It. E.J. Capaldi, Levels of Organized Behavior in Rats. H. Davis, Logical Transitivity in Animals.