Short-term memory for temporal intervals : contrasting explanations of the choo...

• Author(s): Pinto, Carlos ; Machado, Armando
• Date: 2011
• Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/1822/12650
• Origin: RepositóriUM - Universidade do Minho
• Subject(s): Choose-short effect; Short-term memory; Timing; Subjective shortening model; Coding model; Confusion hypothesis; Delayed matching-to-sample; Pigeon
• Document Type: Article
• Language: English

Description

To better understand short-term memory for temporal intervals, we re-examined the choose-short effect. In Experiment 1, to contrast the predictions of two models of this effect, the subjective shortening and the coding models, pigeons were exposed to a delayed matching-to-sample task with three sample durations (2, 6 and 18 s) and retention intervals ranging from 0 to 20 s. Consistent with the coding model, the results suggested a sudden forgetting of memories for duration. In Experiment 2, to test the confusion hypothesis, the characteristics of the ITI and the retention interval differed. Contrary to the confusion hypothesis, a choose-short effect was obtained. In both experiments, a test with only two of the three comparison keys was performed. The results suggest three effects that may be controlling the birds’ responses: stimulus generalization when no retention interval is present; an increase in random responding at longer retention intervals; and, similarly, an increase in preference for the “short-sample” key at longer retention intervals.