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Stimulus asymmetry in the pigeon’s successive matching-to-sample performance
Journal article   Open access

Stimulus asymmetry in the pigeon’s successive matching-to-sample performance

K. R Nelson and E. A Wasserman
Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, Vol.18(6), pp.343-346
12/1981
DOI: 10.3758/BF03333647
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https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03333647View
Published (Version of record) Open Access

Abstract

Two experiments examined the role of color and line-tile keylight stimuli as samples and tests in a symbolic successive matching-to-sample procedure. In Experiment 1, one group of pigeons (Group CL) was given color sample stimuli and line-tilt test stimuli. A second (Group LC) had line-tilt samples and color tests. Group CL mastered the delayed conditional discrimination quite rapidly; however, Group LC showed almost no evidence of learning the problem, even though the retention interval was very short (1 sec). In Experiment 2, a single group of pigeons was given both the color/line and the line/color problems within each training session. Here, even though the birds readily discriminated the colors and the lines, they responded discriminatively to the test stimuli only on color/line trials. Test performance on color/line trials showed a smooth memory gradient from 1 to 16 sec; test performance on line/color trials was near chance. Possible reasons for the color/line-tilt asymmetry were considered, including the notion that colors are more memorable for pigeons than line tilts.

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