Investigating visuomotor control mechanisms in birds.

2017 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 16K13509
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Experimental psychology
• Research Institution: Keio University
• Principal Investigator: IZAWA Ei-Ichi 慶應義塾大学, 文学部(三田), 准教授 (10433731)
• Research Collaborator: MATSUI Hiroshi 慶應義塾大学, 社会学研究科
• Project Period (FY): 2016-04-01 – 2018-03-31
• Keywords: 鳥類 / 道具使用 / 到達運動 / オンライン制御

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This study aimed to investigate visuomotor control of head-reaching in crows. We conducted three studies. (1)We tried to develop a new technique to measure the eye movement reconstructed by high-speed video images. We found some eye movement during pecking but failed to measure precisely. (2) We examined the flexibility to control pecking to the bill extension by a resin-made artificial bill comparatively in crows and pigeons. Crows showed rapid adjustment pecking immediately after bill extension, but pigeons did not. (3) We investigated the dependence between on-going and preceding head-movement during pecking by testing the effects of prism-shifted vison comparatively in crows and pigeons. In crows, dependence of movement trajectory was found only between proximate segments of the time course of pecking movement, but was found among almost all of the time courses throughout the pecking movement in pigeons. These results suggest online visual feedback in crow pecking.

Free Research Field

比較認知心理学