Abstract
An important aspect of human cognitive behaviour is our ability to develop abstract rules and concepts that allow us to navigate our environment. One of the essential concepts we learn early in life is the notion of sameness, also known as the matching concept. The matching concept that emerges from a simultaneous matching-to-sample (MTS) task is a higher-level cognitive ability and was previously believed to be beyond the ability of most animals. However, current literature suggests that monkeys and pigeons are able to learn the task and may be capable of demonstrating the matching concept, although methodology limitations made this conclusion unclear. The purpose of our current experiment was to see whether pigeons (Columba livia) were capable of applying a matching concept on a simultaneous MTS task. Twelve naïve pigeons were shown a four-stimulus display, two matching stimuli (AA) and two non-matching foil stimuli (BC), and were trained to select the two matching stimuli. Once the subjects reached acquisition criterion (56.25% correct) they were tested for the matching concept by transferring them to novel stimuli. None of the four subjects that met acquisition criteria significantly transferred (33% correct) to the novel stimuli. Thus, we failed to demonstrate the simultaneous matching concept in pigeons. Future studies should explore increasing the frequency of responses to the stimuli and changing the size of the stimuli to more easily accommodate pigeon viewing angles. These changes may encourage pigeons to demonstrate the matching concept and such a finding would narrow the cognitive gap between primates and birds.