Data for "Examination of Hierarchical Form Perception in African Grey Parrots (Psittacus erithacus)"

The perception of objects is a challenging task that requires recognizing visual elements and integrating them into a whole. While human vision prioritizes attention to the overall configuration, data from other species suggests this bias towards global form perception is not universal. Studies with pigeons have indicated that they preferentially attend to local details when both local and global information may be diagnostic, but studies with other bird species is more limited. To examine whether this local bias is class-wide or potentially species-specific, we studied whether African Grey parrots (<i>Psittacus erithacus</i>) have a bias towards local elements or the global configuration when processing Navon-like hierarchical form displays. Two parrots were tested using a computerized touch screen two-choice task that presented displays that were local-relevant or global-relevant. The results suggest that these parrots have no local or global bias, indicating differing evolutionary or ecological drives to visual processing among avian species.

物体知觉是一项兼具挑战性的任务，需识别视觉元素并将其整合为有机整体。人类视觉系统优先关注整体构型，但其他物种的相关研究表明，这种偏向全局形式知觉的认知偏好并非普遍存在。已有针对鸽子的研究显示，当局部与全局信息均具备诊断价值时，鸽子会优先关注局部细节，但针对其他鸟类的同类研究仍较为匮乏。为探究这种局部偏向是鸟类类群共有的特征，还是物种特异性的现象，本研究以非洲灰鹦鹉（*Psittacus erithacus*）为研究对象，考察其在处理纳冯式层级视觉刺激（Navon-like hierarchical form displays）时，是偏向局部元素还是整体构型。我们采用计算机化触摸屏二选一任务对两只非洲灰鹦鹉开展测试，任务中呈现的刺激分别与局部信息相关或全局信息相关。研究结果表明，这些非洲灰鹦鹉既未表现出局部偏向，也未表现出整体偏向，这提示鸟类类群的视觉加工可能存在差异化的进化或生态驱动机制。