Abstract
In this review, we address the question, central to cognition, of whether nonhuman animals such as rats are capable of extracting and extending information from a given learning situation to a new learning situation without generalizing through a physical dimension of the stimuli. This capacity underlies abstraction, which is a hallmark of human cognition and necessary for complex information processing such as language acquisition. We selectively review recent experiments with rats in which systematic changes in information processing of new stimuli are observed after training with different stimuli. These results strongly suggest that this capacity is present in rats. We also review two articles in which clear limitations to this capacity are detected. We conclude that, within specified limits, rats are capable of using prior experience when faced with a learning situation that involves new stimuli. We interpret this ability as a rudimentary form of abstraction. In the face of these provocative results, new theories of learning should be designed to account for these findings.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Alvarado MC, Rudy JW (1992) Some properties of configural learning: an investigation of the transverse-patterning problem. J Exp Psych: Anim Behav Process 18:145–153
Beckers T, De Houwer J, Pineño O, Miller RR (2005) Outcome additivity and outcome maximality influence cue competition in human causal learning. J Exp Psych: Learn Mem Cogn 31:238–249
Beckers T, Miller RR, De Houwer J, Urushihara K (2006) Reasoning rats: forward blocking in Pavlovian animal conditioning is sensitive to constraints of causal inference. J Exp Psych: Gen 135:92–102
Borges JL (1942) Funes the memorious. In: Fictions. Grove Press, NY, pp 107–115
Bouton ME (1993) Context, time, and memory retrieval in the interference paradigms of Pavlovian learning. Psych Bull 114:80–99
Bouton ME (2007) Learning and behavior: a contemporary synthesis. Sinauer Associates, Inc., Sunderland
Bovet D, Vauclair J, Blaye A (2005) Categorization and abstraction abilities in 3-year-old children: a comparison with monkey data. Anim Cogn 8:53–59
Bush RR, Mosteller F (1951) A mathematical model for simple learning. Psych Rev 58:313–323
Chomsky N, Halle M (1990) The sound pattern of english. MIT Press, Cambridge
Cook RG, Wasserman EA (2007) Learning and transfer of relational matching-to-sample by pigeons. Psychon Bull Rev 14:1107–1114
Corballis MC (2009) Do rats learn rules? Anim Behav 78:e1–e2
De Houwer J, Vandorpe S, Beckers T (2005) On the role of controlled cognitive processes in human associative learning. In: Wills AJ (ed) New directions in human associative learning. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, pp 41–63
Dickinson A, Burke J (1996) Within-compound associations mediate the retrospective revaluation of causality judgments. Q J Exp Psych 36A:29–50
Durlach PJ, Rescorla RA (1980) Potentiation rather than overshadowing in flavor-aversion learning: an analysis in terms of within-compound associations. J Exp Psych: Anim Behav Process 6:175–187
Gentner D (2003) Why we’re so smart. In: Gentner D, Goldin-Meadow S (eds) Language in mind: advances in the study of language and thought. MIT Press, Cambridge, pp 195–235
Giurfa M, Zhang S, Jenett A, Menzel R, Srinivasan MV (2001) The concepts of ‘sameness’ and ‘difference’ in an insect. Nature 410:930–933
Gómez RL, Gerken L (2000) Infant artificial language learning and language acquisition. Trends Cog Sci 4:178–186
Hauser MD, Weiss D, Marcus G (2002) Rule learning by cotton-top tamarins. Cogn 86:B15–B22
Hummel JE, Holyoak KJ (2003) A symbolic-connectionist theory of relational inference and generalization. Psych Rev 110:220–264
Kamin LJ (1968) ‘Attention like” processes in classical conditioning. In: Jones MR (ed) Miami symposium on the prediction of behavior: aversive stimulation. University of Miami Press, Miami, pp 9–31
Kaufman MA, Bolles RC (1981) A nonassociative aspect of overshadowing. Bull Psychon Soc 18:318–320
Kraljic T, Brennan SE, Samuel AG (2008) Accommodating variation: dialects, idiolects, and speech processing. Cogn 107:54–81
Kucharski D, Spear NE (1985) Potentiation and overshadowing in preweanling and adult rats. J Exp Psych: Anim Behav Process 11:15–34
Lazareva OE, Wasserman EA (2008) Categories and concepts in animals. In: R Menzel, J Byrne (eds) Learning theory and behavior. Vol. 1 of Learning and memory: a comprehensive reference (4 vols, pp. 197–226) Elsevier, Oxford
Livesey EJ, Harris JA (2008) What are flexible representations?: commentary on Melchers, Shanks, and Lachnit. Behav Process 77:437–439
Marcus GF (2001) The algebraic mind: integrating connectionism and cognitive science. MIT Press, Cambridge
Marcus GF, Vijayan S, Bandi Rao S, Vishton PM (1999) Rule learning by seven-month-old infants. Science 283:77–80
McClelland JL, Rumelhart DE (eds) (1986) Parallel distributed processing: explorations in the microstructure of cognition, vol 1. MIT Press, Cambridge
McLaren IPL, Mackintosh NJ (2000) An elemental model of associative learning: I. Latent inhibition and perceptual learning. Anim Learn Behav 28:211–246
McLaren IPL, Mackintosh NJ (2002) Associative learning and elemental representation: II. Generalization and discrimination. Anim Learn Behav 30:177–200
Melchers KG, Shanks DR, Lachnit H (2008) Stimulus coding in human associative learning: flexible representations of parts and wholes. Behav Process 77:413–427
Miller RR, Matzel LD (1988) The comparator hypothesis: a response rule for the expression of associations. In: Bower GH (ed) The psychology of learning and motivation, vol 22. Academic Press, Orlando, pp 51–92
Mondragón E, Murphy RA, Murphy VA (2009) Rats do learn XYX rules. Anim Behav 78:e3–e4
Murphy RA, Mondragón E, Murphy VA (2008) Rule learning in rats. Science 319:1849–1851
Nosofsky RM, Palmeri TJ, McKinley SC (1994) Rule-plus-exception model of classification learning. Psych Rev 101:53–79
Pavlov IP (1927) Conditioned reflexes (trans: Anrep GV). Oxford University Press, London
Pearce JM (1987) A model for stimulus generalization in Pavlovian conditioning. Psych Rev 94:61–73
Pearce JM, Hall G (1980) A model for Pavlovian learning: variations in the effectiveness of conditioned but not of unconditioned stimuli. Psych Rev 87:532–552
Penn DC, Povinelli DJ (2007) Causal cognition in human and nonhuman animals: a comparative, critical review. Ann Rev Psych 58:97–118
Penn DC, Holyoak KJ, Povinelli DJ (2008) Darwin’s mistake: explaining the discontinuity between human and nonhuman minds. Behav Brain Sc 31:109–178
Pinker S (1991) Rules of language. Science 253:530–535
Rescorla RA (1981) Simultaneous associations. In: Harzem P, Zeiler MD (eds) Predictability, correlation, and contiguity. Wiley, New York, pp 47–80
Rescorla RA, Wagner AR (1972) A theory of Pavlovian conditioning: variations in the effectiveness of reinforcement and nonreinforcement. In: Black WF Prokasy AH (ed) Classical conditioning II: current research and theory. Appleton Century Crofts, New York, pp 64–99
Sacks O (1970). A walking groove. In: The man who mistook his wife for a hat (pp 187–194). Harper & Row, NY
Shanks DR (2005) Connectionist models of basic human learning processes. In: Houghton G (ed) Connectionist models in cognitive psychology. Psych. Press, Hove, pp 45–82
Spence KW (1937) The differential response in animals to stimuli varying within a single dimension. Psych Rev 44:430–444
Stout SC, Miller RR (2007) Sometimes-competing retrieval (SOCR): a formalization of the comparator hypothesis. Psych Rev 114:759–783
Urcelay GP, Miller RR (2009) Potentiation and overshadowing in Pavlovian fear conditioning. J Exp Psych: Anim Behav Process; 35:340–356
Van Hamme LJ, Wasserman EA (1994) Cue competition in causality judgments: the role of nonpresentation of compound stimulus elements of nonpresentation of compound stimulus elements. Learn Motiv 25:127–151
Wagner AR, Vogel EH (2008) Configural and elemental processing in associative learning: commentary on Melchers, Shanks, and Lachnit. Behav Process 77:446–450
Wagner AR, Logan FA, Haberlandt K, Price T (1968) Stimulus selection in animal discrimination learning. J Exp Psych 76:171–180
Wheeler DS, Beckers T, Miller RR (2008) The effect of subadditive pretraining on blocking: limits on generalization. Learn Behav 36:341–351
Williams DA, Braker DS (1999) Influence of past experience on the coding of compound stimuli. J Exp Psych: Anim Behav Process 25:461–474
Williams DA, Braker DS (2002) Input coding in animal and human associative learning. Behav Process 57:149–161
Williams DA, Sagness KE, McPhee JE (1994) Configural and elemental strategies in predictive learning. J Exp Psych: Learn Mem Cogn 20:694–709
Acknowledgments
National Institute of Mental Health Grant 33881 (RRM) supported the preparation of this review. The authors thank Eric Curtis, Jeremie Jozefowiez, Kenneth J. Kurtz, Mario Laborda, Bridget McConnell, Gonzalo Miguez, Cody Polack, and James Witnauer for their comments on an earlier version of this manuscript. We also wish to thank Derek C. Penn and three anonymous reviewers for insightful comments that have largely improved this manuscript.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding authors
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Urcelay, G.P., Miller, R.R. On the generality and limits of abstraction in rats and humans. Anim Cogn 13, 21–32 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-009-0295-z
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-009-0295-z