Department of Psychology, The Ohio State University, 1835 Neil Avenue, Columbus, OH 43210, United States.
Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences, The University of Iowa, W311 Seashore Hall, Iowa City, IA 52242, United States.
Cognition. 2018 Aug;177:30-40. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2018.03.015. Epub 2018 Apr 6.
This work examines cognitive flexibility using a comparative approach. Pigeons (Experiment 1), human children (Experiment 2a), and human adults (Experiment 2b) performed a task that required changing responses to the same stimuli twice across the experiment. The results indicate that all three groups demonstrated robust memory for learned information. In addition, pigeons showed comparable and substantial perseveration following both response shifts. In contrast, both children and adults exhibited some perseveration following a first response shift, while exhibiting no cost following the second response shift. These findings are discussed in relation to memory-based theories of cognitive flexibility, according to which perseveration occurs as a result of competition between long-term and working memory, revealing important differences in memory and cognitive flexibility between species.
本研究采用比较方法考察了认知灵活性。鸽子（实验 1）、人类儿童（实验 2a）和成人（实验 2b）完成了一项任务，要求他们在实验过程中两次改变对相同刺激的反应。结果表明，所有三组都表现出对所学信息的强大记忆。此外，鸽子在两次反应转变后都表现出类似的、大量的坚持。相比之下，儿童和成人在第一次反应转变后都表现出一些坚持，而在第二次反应转变后则没有成本。这些发现与基于记忆的认知灵活性理论有关，根据该理论，坚持是由于长期记忆和工作记忆之间的竞争造成的，这揭示了物种之间在记忆和认知灵活性方面的重要差异。
