Do bantams amodally complete partly occluded figures?(Summary of Awarded Presentation at the 27th Annual Meeting)

抄録

We examined whether adult bantams (Gallus gallus domesticus) complete occluded parts of objects (amodal completion) using a visual search task. First, 3 bantams were trained to search for a punched red diamond (a target) among complete diamonds (distracters) displayed on a touch-sensitive monitor. Next, white squares accompanied each figure with a small gap of a fixed size. In the test, the location of the accompanying squares sometimes changed. In some trials, the white squares exactly covered, or "occluded", the punched portion of the target. All three bantams had no difficulty in searching for targets in this "occluded" condition. This result, and the demonstration by Forkman (1998) of hens' amodal completion of figures placed on a perspective background, suggest that the perspective cue may have an important role in amodal completion for this species, or perhaps for the avian species.