Wright Anthony A, Elmore L Caitlin
Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy, University of Texas Health Science Center, The University of Texas Health Science Center Medical School at Houston, 6431 Fannin Street, Suite 7.174, Houston, TX 77030 United States.
Department of Neuroscience, Baylor College of Medicine, The University of Texas Health Science Center Medical School at Houston, United States.
Behav Processes. 2016 Feb;123:84-9. doi: 10.1016/j.beproc.2015.09.002. Epub 2015 Sep 3.
Three pigeons were trained to remember arrays of 2-6 colored squares and detect which of two squares had changed color to test their visual short-term memory. Procedures (e.g., stimuli, displays, viewing times, delays) were similar to those used to test monkeys and humans. Following extensive training, pigeons performed slightly better than similarly trained monkeys, but both animal species were considerably less accurate than humans with the same array sizes (2, 4 and 6 items). Pigeons and monkeys showed calculated memory capacities of one item or less, whereas humans showed a memory capacity of 2.5 items. Despite the differences in calculated memory capacities, the pigeons' memory results, like those from monkeys and humans, were all well characterized by an inverse power-law function fit to d' values for the five display sizes. This characterization provides a simple, straightforward summary of the fundamental processing of visual short-term memory (how visual short-term memory declines with memory load) that emphasizes species similarities based upon similar functional relationships. By closely matching pigeon testing parameters to those of monkeys and humans, these similar functional relationships suggest similar underlying processes of visual short-term memory in pigeons, monkeys and humans.
训练了三只鸽子来记住由2至6个彩色方块组成的阵列，并检测两个方块中哪个颜色发生了变化，以此测试它们的视觉短期记忆。实验程序（如刺激、展示、观看时间、延迟）与用于测试猴子和人类的程序相似。经过大量训练后，鸽子的表现略优于经过类似训练的猴子，但在相同阵列大小（2、4和6个项目）下，这两种动物的准确率都远低于人类。鸽子和猴子的计算记忆容量为一项或更少，而人类的记忆容量为2.5项。尽管计算出的记忆容量存在差异，但鸽子的记忆结果，与猴子和人类的结果一样，都可以通过对五种展示大小的d'值拟合的幂律函数很好地描述。这种描述提供了视觉短期记忆基本处理过程（视觉短期记忆如何随记忆负荷下降）的简单、直接的总结，强调了基于相似功能关系的物种相似性。通过将鸽子的测试参数与猴子和人类的参数紧密匹配，这些相似的功能关系表明鸽子、猴子和人类的视觉短期记忆具有相似的潜在过程。
