Shape discrimination in rat, octopus, and goldfish: A comparative study.

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Abstract
20 male rats, 24 octopuses, and 20 goldfish were trained to discriminate between a square and a vertically or horizontally oriented parallelogram, and were given transfer tests with a battery of other shapes. The main conclusions were: (1) a prediction made by a previous theory of shape recognition was disproved; (2) rats classified the parallelogram as a shape containing a predominance of oblique contour; they did not confuse mirror-image parallelograms; (3) octopuses classified the parallelogram as a shape containing thin segments; they confused mirror-image parallelograms; and (4) goldfish results were midway between 2 and 3. The results are interpreted according to a new theory of shape recognition based on receptive fields. (21 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)

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