Journal article
Qualitative similarities in the visual short-term memory of pigeons and people
Psychonomic bulletin & review, Vol.18(5), pp.979-984
10/2011
DOI: 10.3758/s13423-011-0132-7
PMCID: PMC3213693
PMID: 21748417
Abstract
Visual short-term memory plays a key role in guiding behavior, and individual differences in visual short-term memory capacity are strongly predictive of higher cognitive abilities. To provide a broader evolutionary context for understanding this memory system, we directly compared the behavior of pigeons and humans on a change detection task. Although pigeons had a lower storage capacity and a higher lapse rate than humans, both species stored multiple items in short-term memory and conformed to the same basic performance model. Thus, despite their very different evolutionary histories and neural architectures, pigeons and humans have functionally similar visual short-term memory systems, suggesting that the functional properties of visual short-term memory are subject to similar selective pressures across these distant species.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Qualitative similarities in the visual short-term memory of pigeons and people
- Creators
- Brett Gibson - University of New HampshireEdward Wasserman - University of IowaSteven J Luck - University of California-Davis
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Psychonomic bulletin & review, Vol.18(5), pp.979-984
- DOI
- 10.3758/s13423-011-0132-7
- PMID
- 21748417
- PMCID
- PMC3213693
- ISSN
- 1069-9384
- eISSN
- 1531-5320
- Grant note
- R01 MH076226-07 || MH / National Institute of Mental Health : NIMH
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 10/2011
- Academic Unit
- Psychological and Brain Sciences; Iowa Neuroscience Institute
- Record Identifier
- 9984070541402771
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