Abstract
As evident from the previous chapter, behavioural ecology studied the predator recognition process rather subjectively. It followed up on the work of the founders of the European ethological school, mainly focusing on the role of individual distinct features. Cognitive ethology deals with studying recognition processes in a much deeper way. However, it is not about recognizing predators or other relevant objects by untrained birds. Cognitive ethology followed up on the founding work of the American ethological school addressing the learning process (Watson 1913; Skinner 1931), which developed a precise methodology based on conditioning learning. In the case of studying recognition processes, the researched animals are in the simplest option trained to distinguish between two groups of objects, so that they are rewarded for the answer to one of them (positive stimuli) while not being rewarded for the answer to the other (negative stimuli). After having reached a certain level (proportion) of correct responses, the experimental animals are presented with new groups of objects that are modified in one or more features to determine whether they categorize these objects into groups learnt during the training.
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Fuchs, R., Veselý, P., Nácarová, J. (2019). General Principles of the Objects Recognition. In: Predator Recognition in Birds. SpringerBriefs in Animal Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12404-5_4
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