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Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior logoLink to Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior
. 1992 Jul;58(1):159–172. doi: 10.1901/jeab.1992.58-159

Sample-stimulus discriminability and sensitivity to reinforcement in delayed matching to sample

B Maxwell Jones, K Geoffrey White
PMCID: PMC1322120  PMID: 16812662

Abstract

Five pigeons were trained in a delayed matching-to-sample task with red and green stimuli. The retention interval between sample-stimulus presentation and the availability of the choice stimuli was varied between 0.01 s and 12 s within each session. The probability of food produced by correct-red and correct-green responses was varied across conditions. Sample-stimulus discriminability and response bias were measured at four different retention intervals. The results of these analyses showed an interaction between the discriminability of the sample stimuli and the control exerted by differential reinforcement. At longer retention intervals, sample discriminability decreased and sensitivity of choice behavior to changes in the red/green reinforcer ratio increased. An analogous relation has been reported in conditional discriminations in which the physical disparity of stimuli has been varied. This correspondence suggests that increasing the delay between presentation of one of two stimuli and an opportunity to respond discriminatively to it may be functionally similar to increasing the physical similarity of the two stimuli.

Keywords: nonhuman remembering, stimulus discriminability, sensitivity to reinforcement, response bias, delayed matching to sample, conditional discrimination, key peck, pigeon

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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