Memory Processing of Serial Lists by Pigeons, Monkeys, and People

Abstract

List memory of pigeons, monkeys, and humans was tested with lists of four visual items (travel slides for animals and kaleidoscope patterns for humans). Retention interval increases for list-item memory revealed a consistent modification of the serial-position function shape: a monotonically increasing function at the shortest interval, a U-shaped function at intermediate intervals, and a monotonically decreasing function at the longest interval. The time course of these changes was fastest for pigeons, intermediate for monkeys, and slowest for humans.

Simulating the cross-linguistic pattern of Optional Infinitive errors in children’s declaratives and Wh- questions

“…Neath, 1993;Sikström, 2006). Moreover, primacy (and recency) effects have also been found in non-human species (monkeys and pigeons), where active elaboration processes are unlikely to play a major role (Wright, Santiago, Sands, Kendrick & Rook, 1985). These findings can be explained in terms of the increased (temporal) distinctiveness of items occurring at the beginning and end of a list or sequence, and suggest that language-learning children are likely to be preferentially sensitive to both the beginning and the end of unfamiliar utterances.…”

Constructing Visual Representations of Natural Scenes: The Roles of Short- and Long-Term Visual Memory.

“…In the visual memory literature, recency effects have been consistently observed for the immediate recognition of sequentially presented visual stimuli, ranging from novel abstract patterns (Broadbent & Broadbent, 1981;Neath, 1993;Phillips, 1983;Phillips & Christie, 1977;Wright, Santiago, Sands, Kendrick, & Cook, 1985) to pictures of common objects and scenes (Korsnes, 1995;Potter & Levy, 1969). 2 Phillips and Christie (1977) presented a series of between five and eight randomly configured checkerboard objects at fixation.…”

Neurophysiological Studies of Learning and Memory in Pigeons

“…And these amazing abilities are not restricted to members of the corvid family. Pigeons also have been shown to perform as well as monkeys on tasks of concept formation (Colombo et al, 2003;Wright, 1997), and serial-order knowledge (Scarf & Colombo, 2010Terrace, 1987;Wright, Santiago, Sands, Kendrick, & Cook, 1985). These behavioral findings, along with modern histochemical techniques that indicate that the avian telencephalon is in fact pallial (i.e., cortical) but organized with a nuclear rather than laminar architecture (Karten & Shimizu, 1989), has prompted a reconsideration of avian brain nomenclature.…”