Stimulus pretraining and subsequent performance in the delayed reaction experiment.

Spiker, Charles C.

doi:10.1037/h0046983

Cited by 77 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…In human subjects, for example, verbal behavior often appears to have similar properties whether it is overt or covert , and the two sometimes occur almost interchangeably. Spiker (1956) found that preschool children did better in delayed-response experiments when they knew names for the stimuli involved than when they did not. It is interesting to compare the children's verbal behavior with the pigeons' symbolic chains: "...nine of the 27 Ss spontaneously verbalized the name of the baited box during the delay periods, sometimes repeating the name several times during a single delay period" (page 111).…”

Section: Related Analyses Ofdelayed Respondingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Delayed Matching in the Pigeon

Blough

1959

J Exper Analysis Behavior

414

241

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A discriminative stimulus is sometimes said to "control" the strength or probability of a response. How long does such control last after the stimulus disappears? How is control maintained in the absence of the stimulus? What variables affect this control? Hunter (1913) introduced the study of these problems in his classic experiments on the delayed response in animals and children. The present paper reports the behavior of pigeons in an operant delayed matching situation. Pigeons matched a flickering or steady sample by pecking the correspondingly illuminated response key. This matching behavior was found to depend on the length of the delay intervening between the disappearance of the sample and the bird's choice response, and upon the bird's behavior during the delay interval. METHOD Subjects and ApparatusThe subjects were four young male pigeons (Palmetto White Carneaux). The birds were maintained at a level of food deprivation at which they behaved effectively, three at about 80% of free-feeding weight, one (bird 1) at 70%.The birds worked in an experimental box equipped with two 1-inch translucent plastic response keys, spaced 2.25 inches horizontally between centers. Between the keys was the "sample," a vertical aperture approximately 0.3 by 1.6 inches, backed by translucent plastic. Six-watt bults illuminated the keys and sample independently, with white light, either flickering (about 10 cycles per second) or steady, or with a red light. A 6-watt "house light" illuminated the box at all times. A solenoidoperated feeding tray below the response keys presented grain reinforcement. Food was available for only about 2.3 seconds at each reinforcement, just enough time for the bird to pick up a grain or two. An automatic switching circuit programmed the presentation of stimulus lights and food reinforcements. Pecks were recorded on a bank of counters and an Esterline-Angus multiple event recorder. PROCEDURE Following magazine training, the birds were trained by approximation to peck both response keys. Then, the following sequence of stimuli was introduced. First, the sample was illuminated for 1 second by white light, either flickering or steady. When this stimulus disappeared, the two keys, previously dark, were illuminated. One of the keys, left or right at random, was illuminated by a steady light, the other by a flickering light.2 These lights stayed on until the bird pecked either key. The bird received reinforcement every time it "matched" the sample, that is, when it pecked the flickering key following the flickering sample, or the steady key follow-

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Section: Related Analyses Ofdelayed Respondingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Delayed Matching in the Pigeon

Blough

1959

J Exper Analysis Behavior

414

241

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“…The results support the hypothesis that naming facilitates the formation of an integrated representation in which information about the different contours of the shape is more closely linked than in a nonverbal representation. Spiker (1956), Ranken (1963), and others have obtained facilitative effects of stimulus naming in a variety of memory tasks. Ss' comments during post-experimental questioning suggest that with unfamiliar shapes one effect of names is to provide stable, integrated representations of the shapes: Ss often report that the names give them "something concrete" to remember (Ranken, 1963).…”

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confidence: 99%

Language and memory: Redintegrative memory for shapes facilitated by naming

Santa

Ranken

1968

Psychon Sci

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Redintegrative memory for novel shapes (remembering the whole shape when only a part is presented) was studied as a function of whether or not S had learned names for the shapes. Naming markedly facilitated short-term redintegrative recognition, but had no effect on simple recognition. The results support the hypothesis that naming facilitates the formation of an integrated representation in which information about the different contours of the shape is more closely linked than in a nonverbal representation. Spiker (1956), Ranken (1963), and others have obtained facilitative effects of stimulus naming in a variety of memory tasks. Ss' comments during post-experimental questioning suggest that with unfamiliar shapes one effect of names is to provide stable, integrated representations of the shapes: Ss often report that the names give them "something concrete" to remember (Ranken, 1963). An integrated representation of a complex shape may be thought of as one in which the representations of the various parts or contours of the shape are closely linked, so that the occurrence of one tends to evoke the others. On this interpretation, the degree of integration of S's representation would be reflected in a redintegrative memory task, in which he is shown part of a shape and asked to remember the rest. In the present experiment, the hypothesis that naming facilitates the formation of integrated representations of unfamiliar shapes was tested by determining the effect of naming on performance in a redintegrative recognition task. METHOD StimuliThe stimulus shapes ( Fig. I) had irregular top and bottom contours and straight sides. Thus each shape could be divided by a horizontal line into a top and bottom half, each half containing one of the two contours which defined the shape. The shapes, I in. wide, were shown on a rear-projection screen at a viewing distance of about 20 in. DesignTwo training conditions, Named and Unnamed, and two test tasks, Redintegration and Recognition, were used in a 2 by 2 design. Two replications were run, approximately a month apart, with four Ss (introductory psychology students) in each cell in each replication.During training, Ss in the Named condition learned names for the shapes, while Ss in the Unnamed condition had equal practice in discriminating both top and bottom contours of the shapes in a delayed matching-ta-sample task, but were not given names. In the Redintegration test task, in essence, S was shown a top contour, followed by a bottom contour, and was asked to indicate whether the second contour came from the same shape as the first. The task may be thought of as a recognition test of redintegrative memory, in which S's ability to remember the correct bottom contour of a shape, given the top contour, is tested by his ability to recognize the presented bottom contour as correct or reject it as incorrect.The Recognition test task served as a control for the effect of naming on memory for specific contours. In essence, S was shown a top contour, followed by another top contour, ...

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“…Third, naming may reinf'orce a short-term memory trace (Kingsley & Hagen, 1969), increasing the probability or duration of storage in "pr-Imar-y" memory (Waugh & Norman, 1965). Fourth, according to the l1 a cqu i r ed distincti veness of cues tl hypothes is, labeling may render stimuli "functionally more dissimilar l1 and thus easier to discriminate (Spiker, 1956). Fifth, it may direct the child's "observing responses" (Kurtz, 1955), possibly causing him to search f'or aspects or dimensions of the stimulus which will be -6-especially use~ul in discriminating it from other stimuli.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effect of Labels on Memory in the Absence of Rehearsal1

Ward

Legant

1970

ETS Research Bulletin Series

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Nursery school children were shown two pictures and then asked to pick those they had seen from an array of 10 possibilities. Half the subjects labeled the pictures as they were shown; the remaining half observed without labeling. For all subjects there was a 20‐second delay between presentation and recall, during which the tester conversed with the child to prevent rehearsal. Subjects who labeled showed recall superior to that of subjects who did not, indicating that the facilitating effect of labels in short‐term memory is not solely attributable either to an increased tendency to rehearse or to the strengthening of a “primary” memory trace.

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Stimulus pretraining and subsequent performance in the delayed reaction experiment.

Cited by 77 publications

References 11 publications

Delayed Matching in the Pigeon

Delayed Matching in the Pigeon

Language and memory: Redintegrative memory for shapes facilitated by naming

Effect of Labels on Memory in the Absence of Rehearsal1

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