The top gamer hen: introducing a touch-screen device with serial reversal learning and generalization task
Résumé
Improving farm animal welfare requires to deepen our knowledge about their cognitive capacities, which will enable us to understand their subjective point of view. Fundamental and applied cognition research may gain to develop automated testing devices adapted to farm animals. We developped a fully automated touch-screen device enabling to test a large range of cognitive capacities in the domestic hen. With this device we implemented a simple and a more complex task, respectively a serial reversal learning task (SRL) and a generalization test implemented through a delayed matching-to-sample task (dMTS). For the SRL task, a first stage consisted in rewarding hens either when it pecked on a red or a green item; then hens passed through three successive reversal stages (i.e., peck on the other colour). Already at the third reversal stage, hens performed as well as at the first learning stage, showing that they rapidly integrated the long-term switch-rule of the task. For the generalization task, hens were first successfully taught to respond to a dMTS task, with four colors. The generalization test consisted in measuring hens’ performance with two novel colors. The results suggest that hens are able to generalize an identity concept to a novel stimulus.