At three days post-hatching, training to associate a colour cue with a food reward in form of 1/3 of a mealworm started. This is considered as a simple learning task. 
The task is conducted in a way where the chick is presented with two bowls in two colours and is trained to associate one of the colours with a reward. This is done by first helping the chick to find the reward and gradually decreasing the help until the chick is making the correct choice by itself. The task was considered as learned when the chick made six correct choices in a row without receiving any help from the handler. 

At five days post-hatching and, the conditions changed. The previously rewared colour was now unrewarded and the unrewarded colour became rewarded. The task was conducted in a similar way as the associative learning task, but this time the chick did not receive any help from the handler. 

At 13-15 days of age, a generalisation task was conducted.
Chicks were first trained to associate the colours red and yellow with a food reward placed in cones. Later, the chicks’ ability to generalise an intermediate colour (orange) was tested in the same arena as the training took place.

When five weeks old, chicks were exposed to a spatial learning task.
Each chick was trained to learn to orient themselves in a U-shaped arena (76 × 114 cm) to locate a reward (a mealworm in a bowl). The chick was considered to have learned the task when it moved through the arena without stopping or turning around five times in a row.

When 21-25 days old, chicks were exposed to a learning task to investigate selective attention. Chicks learned to associate one out of two colour cues and also one out of two symbols with food rewards. Later, the chicks’ hierarchical attention between colour and symbol was tested.