ABSTRACT
Generally, processing of visual stimuli is explained by decomposition of stimuli into characteristic and/or defining elements or features. An animal, when learning relations between stimuli and responses, is assumed to form associations between elements of the stimuli and the responses. In discrimination problems, hens were trained with elemental stimuli followed by tests of transfer performance to stimuli consisting of combinations of these elements, so called compound stimuli, and vice versa. These experiments showed that the chickens' pecking behavior was not controlled by the elements. An exemplar-based model of stimulus discrimination and categorization is developed. The advantage of this modeling approach is that one can directly test the adequacy of theoretical assumptions by measuring the performance of the agent in the same way as was done with the chickens before. The experimental work has been supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. The autonomous agent model has been supported by the VolkswagenStiftung and the Gottlieb Daimler und Carl Benz Stiftung.
