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PIGEONS' SPATIAL MEMORY: II. ACQUISITION OF DELAYED MATCHING OF KEY LOCATION AND TRANSFER TO NEW LOCATIONS
Author(s) -
Wilkie Donald M.
Publication year - 1983
Publication title -
journal of the experimental analysis of behavior
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.75
H-Index - 61
eISSN - 1938-3711
pISSN - 0022-5002
DOI - 10.1901/jeab.1983.39-69
Subject(s) - peck (imperial) , key (lock) , matching (statistics) , sample (material) , reinforcement , artificial intelligence , transfer (computing) , computer science , psychology , set (abstract data type) , statistics , pattern recognition (psychology) , mathematics , social psychology , computer security , chemistry , geometry , chromatography , parallel computing , programming language
Five hungry pigeons first received delayed matching of key location training. Trials began with a “ready” stimulus (brief operation of the grain feeder). Then one (randomly chosen) of a set of four keys from a three‐by‐three matrix was lit briefly as the sample. After a short delay (retention interval), the sample key was lit again along with one of the other eight keys. A peck at the key that had served as the sample produced grain reinforcement, whereas a peck to the other key produced only the intertrial interval. After delayed matching of key location was learned, the remaining five key locations were introduced as samples. Four of the five birds performed at considerably above‐chance levels on the novel sample trials during the first as well as subsequent sessions. These results suggest that pigeons sometimes learn the single rule—“choose the location that matches the sample.” The relevance of these results to the issue of whether pigeons learn a generalized matching rule (i.e., a concept of “sameness”) is discussed.