Same/different learning by pigeons has long been of interest to experimental psychologists. In one of these procedures, matching-to-sample, responses to a sample stimulus result in the presentation of two comparison stimuli, one of which matches the sample, the other of which does not, and choice of the matching stimulus is reinforced. Evidence of a matching concept has been found when transfer has been found to new stimuli. Given the transfer results, it is surprising that acquisition of two matching tasks (or two mismatching tasks), has not been found to be any faster than one matching and one mismatching task (i.e., two compatible tasks do not appear to facilitate each other). In the present experiment, we asked if matching acquisition involving three colors would be retarded if the correct response to a fourth color was not matching but was spatial (e.g., if the sample is red choose the red comparison, if the sample is green choose the green comparison, if the sample is yellow choose the yellow comparison, but if the sample is blue choose the left comparison). We found that acquisition of this task was slower than acquisition of a four color matching task (i.e., when the sample was blue, the blue comparison was correct). The results suggest that there is an interaction among matching associations, such that common rules facilitate learning compared with having to learn an inconsistent (spatial) rule. This result provides further evidence of the development of a matching concept by pigeons.

实验心理学家长期以来一直对鸽子的相同/不同学习感兴趣。在这些过程之一中，样本匹配，对样本刺激的响应导致出现两个比较刺激，其中一个与样本匹配，另一个不匹配，并且增强了匹配刺激的选择。当发现对新刺激的转移时，就发现了匹配概念的证据。考虑到转移结果，令人惊讶的是，两个匹配任务（或两个不匹配任务）的获取没有发现比一个匹配和一个不匹配任务更快（即两个兼容任务似乎并不相互促进） 。在本实验中，我们询问如果对第四种颜色的正确响应不匹配而是空间性的，涉及三种颜色的匹配采集是否会被延迟（例如，如果样本是红色，则选择红色比较，如果样本是绿色，则选择绿色比较，如果样品是黄色，则选择黄色比较，但如果样品是蓝色，则选择左侧比较）。我们发现该任务的获取比四色匹配任务的获取慢（即当样本为蓝色时，蓝色比较是正确的）。结果表明，匹配关联之间存在相互作用，因此与必须学习不一致的（空间）规则相比，共同的规则有助于学习。这一结果进一步证明了鸽子发展出匹配概念。