The contribution of monocular depth cues to scene perception by pigeons

The contributions of different monocular depth cues to performance of a scene perception task were investigated in 4 pigeons. They discriminated the sequential depth ordering of three geometric objects in computer-rendered scenes. The orderings of these objects were specified by the combined presence or absence of the pictorial cues of relative density, occlusion, and relative size. In Phase 1, the pigeons learned the task as a direct function of the number of cues present. The three monocular cues contributed equally to the discrimination. Phase 2 established that differential shading on the objects provided an additional discriminative cue. These results suggest that the pigeon visual system is sensitive to many of the same monocular depth cues that are known to be used by humans. The theoretical implications for a comparative psychology of picture processing are considered.