Simultaneous discrimination training of octopus and transfer of discrimination along a continuum.

Abstract

Octopuses taught by a new training procedure mastered a simultaneous shape discrimination of moderate difficulty. 3 predictions from a theory about switching in different analyzing mechanisms were tested. (a) Ss 1st trained to discriminate shapes having a large difference along a dimension subsequently performed better with shapes having a small difference than did Ss trained from the outset on the latter shapes. (b) Performance of Ss originally trained on the difficult discrimination showed marked improvement when transfer tests without opportunity for relearning were given with easier discrimination. (c) Asymptotes of performance of Ss trained by the simultaneous and successive methods were the same on the easier discrimination, but Ss trained by the successive method performed better on the difficult discrimination. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)