Symbolic, identity and probe delayed matching of sounds by the
bottlenosed dolphin
- Thompson, R.K.R. and Herman, L.M.
- (C) 1981 Psychonomic Society, Inc.
The short-term memory for sounds of the bottlenosed
dolphin was tested using symbolic, identity, and probe forms of
the delayed matching-to-sample (DMS) task. The forms differed in
the number (one or two) or nature (symbolic or identity matches
of sample sounds) of postdelay test stimuli available as memory
retrieval cues. Although symbolic DMS was difficult to learn, the
final performance level was approximately equal to that for identity
or probe DMS. On all tasks, the dolphin’s responses were above
80% correct through to delays of 90 sec and, in some cases, through
to delays of 180 and 240 sec, the “limits” being governed
mainly by the dolphin’s reluctance to continue being tested
at long delays. Encoding of sample stimuli into their learned symbolic
representation was hypothesized to have reduced symbolic DMS to
a recognition memory task, resulting in the observed equivalence
of performance with the other two recognition memory tasks. The
probe DMS results, unlike those for identity or symbolic DMS, showed
no significant proactive interference effects from samples of prior
trials. Instead, proactive interference was traceable to the probe
value of the prior trial. Overall, the auditory DMS data for the
dolphin were functionally similar to results reported for monkeys
tested on symbolic, identity, and probe visual DMS tasks.
Thompson, R. K. R. and Herman, L. M. (1981). Auditory delayed discriminations
by the dolphin: Nonequivalence with delayed matching performance. Animal Learning and Behavior, 9, 9-15.
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