Associative learning accounts for recursive-structure generation in crows

authors

  • Rey Arnaud
  • Fagot Joël

keywords

  • Recursive structures
  • Center-embeddings
  • Associative learning
  • Primates
  • Crows

document type

ART

abstract

Recursive sequence generation (i.e., the ability to transfer recursive patterns to novel items) was recently reported in crows (Liao et al., 2022, Science Advances, 8[44], eabq3356). Here, we argue that although the reported data are certainly compatible with the recursion hypothesis, they can also be explained by other, much simpler mechanisms of associative learning.

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