Abstract
Trials for food-deprived pigeons began with the illumination of the grain feeder lamp. On a random one-half of the trials, the feeder tray was raised so that the bird could eat. After a delay, which varied between 0 and 25 sec., two response keys were illuminated, one with red and one with green light. Pecking the red (green) key produced grain reinforcement if the trial had started with food (no food); pecking red after no food and green after food was not reinforced. Pecking was controlled by these conditional relations among stimuli, even at the longer delay intervals. Control of pecking was not different on trials that began with food and no food. These results are consistent with a body of literature which suggests that food-related events are memorable.
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BOTTJER, S. W., & HEARST, E. 1976. A feature-positive superiority in discriminations based on memory of a pre-trial food delivery. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Psychonomic Society, St. Louis.
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This research was supported by the National Research Council of Canada. Marcia Spetch and Mike Gordon assisted with the experiment. These data were presented at the 1976 meeting of the Psychonomic Society.
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Wilkie, D.M. Delayed Symbolic Matching to Sample in the Pigeon. Psychol Rec 28, 463–469 (1978). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03394558
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03394558