Abstract
Many studies have addressed the ability of humans and non-human animals to visually recognize objects from different orientations, but few have used fish subjects. This capability would be advantageous for fish because they frequently view objects from different orientations. We tested the ability of goldfish to recognize 2D stimuli from multiple orientations using a two-alternative forced choice task. First the fish were trained to discriminate between two objects at 0 degrees, then they were tested with the same objects at novel aspect angles (45, 90, 135, 180, 225, 270, and 315 degrees). The stimuli for Experiment 1 were a half circle and an upward-pointing arrow, and the stimuli for Experiment 2 were drawings of a turtle and a frog. The current results for Experiment 1 indicate that overall performance was above chance for all aspect angles except 135 (M: 56%) and 225 (M= 64%), but there was no main effect of aspect angle. Current results for Experiment 2 reveal that performance was above chance for all aspect angles except 180 (M: 61%), 225 (M: 61%), and 270 (M: 44%), and performance at 270 (M: 44%) was significantly worse than at 0 (M: 73%).
Kenneth Tyler Wilcox
Statistical Consultant
My research interests include integrative data analysis, meta-analysis, topic modeling, Bayesian statistics, multilevel modeling, statistical programming, and psychology.