Factors influencing scene gist categorization by pigeons

Scene gist categorization in humans is rapid and accurate and appears to be tuned to the fundamental statistical regularities in the visual world. Although pigeons have been reported to form many types of categorical judgments, little research has examined scene categorization by pigeons. Experiment 1 tested whether pigeons were able to recognize scenes with brief exposure times. The pigeons successfully discriminated between two natural scene categories or a natural vs. a man-made category and transferred their discrimination to novel exemplars. Subsequently, the birds successfully transferred their gist discrimination to durations in the 200-350 ms range. This indicates that birds are capable of rapid scene categorization, but they require more stimulus exposure than humans. Experiment 2 examined the effect of viewpoint on gist categorization by testing performance with aerial and ground-based views. The pigeons showed a tendency to perform better to aerial views, in comparison to humans who perform better with ground-based views. Possible sources of the difference in gist categorization processes between pigeons and humans are discussed.