Short-term memory in the pigeon: delayed-pair-comparison procedures and some results

Abstract

A discrete-trials, delayed-pair-comparison procedure was developed to study visual short-term memory for tilted lines. In four experiments, pigeons' responses on left or right keys were reinforced with food depending on whether a comparison stimulus was or was not the same as a standard stimulus presented earlier in the same trial. In Experimental I, recall was an increasing function of the exposure time of the to-be-remembered stimulus and was a decreasing function of the retention interval. In Experiment II, retroactive interference was investigated: recall was poorer after a retention interval during which was presented either a tilted line or contextual stimuli in the form of the illuminated experimental chamber. In Experiment III, a subject was required to engage, throughout the retention interval, in one or the other of two different behaviors, depending on which of two stimuli a subject was to remember. This mnemonic strategy vastly improved recall after 15- and 20-second retention intervals. In Experiment IV, the opposite end of the performance continuum was studied: by combining the effects of a larger stimulus set and the effects of what presumably was an increased memory load, performance was reduced to approximately chance levels after retention intervals shorter than 1 second.