Testing pigeon memory in a change detection task

Wright, Anthony A.; Katz, Jeffrey S.; Magnotti, John F.; Elmore, L. Caitlin; Babb, Stephanie J.; alwin, Sarah

doi:10.3758/pbr.17.2.243

Cited by 32 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…(Results from individual pigeons are shown in Wright et al, 2010). These six pigeons were trained with the same stimulus colors (presented at the same visual angle as the monkeys) and their task was identical in terms of timing and response requirements.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Change detection by rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) and pigeons (Columba livia).

Elmore

Magnotti

Katz

et al. 2012

Journal of Comparative Psychology

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Two monkeys learned a color change-detection task where two colored circles (selected from a 4-color set) were presented on a 4×4 invisible matrix. Following a delay, the correct response was to touch the changed colored circle. The monkeys' learning, color transfer, and delay transfer were compared to a similar experiment with pigeons. Monkeys, like pigeons, showed full transfer to four novel colors, and to delays as long as 6.4 s, suggesting they remembered the colors as opposed to perceptual based attentional capture process that may work at very short delays. The monkeys and pigeons were further tested to compare transfer to other dimensions. Monkeys transferred to shape and location changes, unlike the pigeons, but neither species transferred to size changes. Thus, monkeys were less restricted in their domain to detect change than pigeons, but both species learned the basic task and appear suitable for comparative studies of visual short-term memory.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The pigeon's transfer and baseline were the means of the individual performances shown in Figure 5 of Wright et al, 2010. Error bars represent 95% confidence intervals.…”

Section: Figurementioning

confidence: 99%

Change detection by rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) and pigeons (Columba livia).

Elmore

Magnotti

Katz

et al. 2012

Journal of Comparative Psychology

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“…Even in young people, the ability to hold information in working memory (WM) over a few seconds correlates well with established tests of general intelligence (Conway, Kane, & Engle, 2003). In fact, WM is now considered to be a fundamental cognitive process across a range of species (Elmore et al, 2011; Kawai & Matsuzawa, 2000; Light et al, 2010; Wright et al, 2010). …”

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confidence: 99%

Rapid forgetting results from competition over time between items in visual working memory.

Pertzov¹,

Manohar²,

Husain³

2017

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

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Working memory is now established as a fundamental cognitive process across a range of species. Loss of information held in working memory has the potential to disrupt many aspects of cognitive function. However, despite its significance, the mechanisms underlying rapid forgetting remain unclear, with intense recent debate as to whether it is interference between stored items that leads to loss of information or simply temporal decay. Here we show that both factors are essential and interact in a highly specific manner. Although a single item can be maintained in memory with high fidelity, multiple items compete in working memory, progressively degrading each other’s representations as time passes. Specifically, interaction between items is associated with both worsening precision and increased reporting errors of object features over time. Importantly, during the period of maintenance, although items are no longer visible, maintenance resources can be selectively redeployed to protect the probability to recall the correct feature and the precision with which cued items can be recalled, as if it was the only item in memory. These findings reveal that the biased competition concept could be applied not only to perceptual processes but also to active maintenance of working memory representations over time.

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“…Wright et al (2010) tested pigeons in a variant of the typical human change detection task. They showed the pigeons an array of two colored circles for 5 s. After a short 50 ms delay, a test array was presented in which the color of one of the two circles had changed.…”

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confidence: 99%

Active change detection by pigeons and humans.

Hagmann¹,

Cook²

2013

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes

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Detecting change is vital to both human and non-human animals’ interactions with the environment. Using the go/no-go dynamic change detection task developed by Hagmann and Cook (2011), we examined the capacity of four pigeons to detect changes in brightness of an area on a computer display. In contrast to the prior study, we reversed the response contingencies so that the animals had to actively inhibit pecking upon detecting change in brightness rather than its constancy. Testing eight rates of change revealed that this direct report change detection contingency produced results equivalent to the earlier indirect procedure. Corresponding tests with humans suggested that the temporal dynamics of detecting change were similar for both species. The results indicate the mechanisms of change detection in both pigeons and humans are organized in similar ways, although limitations in the operations of working memory may prevent pigeons from integrating information over the same time scale as humans.

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Testing pigeon memory in a change detection task

Cited by 32 publications

References 27 publications

Change detection by rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) and pigeons (Columba livia).

Change detection by rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) and pigeons (Columba livia).

Rapid forgetting results from competition over time between items in visual working memory.

Active change detection by pigeons and humans.

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