Department of Psychology, Texas Christian University, 2800 S. University Dr., Box 298920, Fort Worth, TX 76129, USA.
Anim Cogn. 2013 Sep;16(5):839-44. doi: 10.1007/s10071-013-0644-9. Epub 2013 Jun 11.
Change detection is commonly used to assess capacity (number of objects) of human visual short-term memory (VSTM). Comparisons with the performance of non-human animals completing similar tasks have shown similarities and differences in object-based VSTM, which is only one aspect ("what") of memory. Another important aspect of memory, which has received less attention, is spatial short-term memory for "where" an object is in space. In this article, we show for the first time that a monkey and pigeons can be accurately trained to identify location changes, much as humans do, in change detection tasks similar to those used to test object capacity of VSTM. The subject's task was to identify (touch/peck) an item that changed location across a brief delay. Both the monkey and pigeons showed transfer to delays longer than the training delay, to greater and smaller distance changes than in training, and to novel colors. These results are the first to demonstrate location-change detection in any non-human species and encourage comparative investigations into the nature of spatial and visual short-term memory.
变化检测常用于评估人类视觉短期记忆（VSTM）的容量（对象数量）。与完成类似任务的非人类动物的表现进行比较表明，基于对象的 VSTM 存在相似之处和差异，这只是记忆的一个方面（“什么”）。记忆的另一个重要方面，即空间短期记忆，对“在哪里”物体在空间中的位置关注较少。在本文中，我们首次表明，猴子和鸽子可以像人类一样，经过精确训练，在与测试 VSTM 对象容量的任务类似的变化检测任务中，准确识别位置变化。在任务中，猴子和鸽子的任务是识别（触摸/啄）在短暂延迟后位置发生变化的项目。猴子和鸽子都表现出对长于训练延迟的延迟、大于和小于训练中距离变化以及新颜色的转移。这些结果首次证明了任何非人类物种都可以进行位置变化检测，并鼓励对空间和视觉短期记忆的本质进行比较研究。
