Data for Perception of Ebbinghaus-Titchener Stimuli in Starlings (Sturnus vulgaris)

Whether animals experience visual illusions is a fertile line of study for examining the evolution and operation of visual cognition across different species. Here, five starlings were tested to examine how they experienced the Ebbinghaus-Titchener illusion. Across two experiments using an absolute target circle size discrimination, the size, similarity, distance, and number of the surrounding flankers were manipulated. The results from the data contained here suggest this passerine species exhibits behavior inconsistent with the perception of an illusion, neither in a human-like fashion nor, as indicated by the first experiment, a reversed illusion. Instead, the typical training used to investigate this illusion caused the starlings to learn to integrate the irrelevant flankers into their decision process in a manner that precludes the study of any illusory perception. The resulting discriminative behavior might best be described using a template-matching account. While illusion perception by animals remains an important comparative question, it requires additional validation to confirm the exact mechanisms of any illusory reports. <br>

动物是否具有视错觉感知，是探究不同物种视觉认知演化与运作机制的极具价值的研究方向。本研究以五只椋鸟为被试，考察其对埃宾豪斯-蒂奇纳错觉（Ebbinghaus-Titchener illusion）的感知体验。两项实验均采用绝对目标圆尺寸辨别任务，对周边侧翼刺激物的尺寸、相似度、间距与数量进行了操控。本数据集所载结果显示，该雀形目鸟类的行为与错觉知觉并不相符：既未表现出类似人类的错觉感知，也未如第一项实验所示出现反向错觉。相反，用于研究该错觉的常规训练范式使得椋鸟学会将无关侧翼刺激纳入决策过程，这种方式完全无法用于探究任何错觉知觉。由此产生的辨别行为或可通过模板匹配解释（template-matching account）得到最佳阐释。尽管动物的错觉知觉仍是比较认知领域的重要研究议题，但仍需额外验证工作，以确认任何错觉报告背后的确切机制。