Cấu hình có thể kích thích và phản ứng trong một công việc phù hợp. Trong mỗi bảng, các hình ảnh thấp hơn là kích thích mẫu và hai hình ảnh trên là tác nhân kích thích thử nghiệm. Mũi tên cho biết phản ứng hành vi. | 26 Rule Representation Figure 2-1 Possible configurations of stimuli and responses in a matching task. In each panel the lower picture is the sample stimulus and the upper two pictures are the test stimuli. The arrow indicates the behavioral response. Although an animal could learn this task by abstracting the rule to choose the upper picture that matched the lower one it could equally learn the task by memorizing the correct response to make to each of the four possible configurations of stimuli. learning gets progressively better with each discrimination they solve Harlow 1949 . Eventually the monkey can learn the problem in a single trial Performance on the first trial is necessarily at chance but performance is virtually 100 correct on the second trial. The monkey has learned to extract the abstract rule win-stay lose-shift which dramatically speeds performance Restle 1958 . So too do corvids but pigeons must solve each discrimination individually Hunter and Kamil 1971 Wilson et al. 1985 . Interestingly corvid brains differ from those of other birds in that they have an enlarged mesopallium and nidopallium areas that are analogous to PFC in mammals Rehkamper and Zilles 1991 prompting speculation that the capacity to use abstract information might have evolved at least twice in the animal kingdom Emery and Clayton 2004 . In fact the capacity to understand certain abstract concepts may be widespread. A recent study showed that even some insects can use same and different rules to guide their behavior Giurfa 2001 . Investigators trained honeybees on a Y-maze. At the entrance to the maze was the sample stimulus and at the entrance to the two forks in the Y-maze were two test stimuli. Bees Neurophysiology of Abstract Rules 27 received a reward for choosing the arm with the matching test stimulus. Not only could the bees learn this task but they also were able to apply the rule to novel stimuli. Furthermore they were just as capable of learning to follow the .
