Signal detection theory and memory for asymmetric events

描述（由申请人提供）：拟定研究旨在测试 各种各样的理论已经提出来解释记忆的 动物中事件的持续时间。兴趣的核心现象被称为 “短平快”效应。短期效应指的是， 无论实际呈现的时间长短如何，鸽子往往会记住 持续时间很短。一个著名的理论认为， 倾向于报告短样本发生在保留间隔内 增加意味着一个事件的记忆持续时间随着时间的推移而缩短。 时间的流逝对这一现象的其他三种解释认为， 这是因为一个事件持续时间短， “没什么”比一个持续时间长的事件更重要。因此，当记忆 最终衰落为零（如当保持间隔较长时所做的那样）， 鸟类倾向于选择两个可用选项中的较好者（即，他们报告 这是一个简短的例子）。另一种解释是鸟类 有能力将一个名义上的辨别任务转化为一个信号 检测任务。信号检测框架已被用来解释 二十多年来对人类识别记忆的研究发现， 但其与动物记忆的相关性尚未得到广泛研究。因为 检测理论提供了一个理论框架共同的两个物种，它 有助于促进相关记忆动物模型的发展 人类的损伤。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The proposed research is designed to test a variety of theories that have been advanced to explain memory for the duration of an event in animals. The core phenomenon of interest is known as the "choose-short" effect. The choose-short effect refers to the fact that, no matter which duration was actually presented, pigeons tend to remember the duration as having been short. One well-known theory holds that the increasing tendency to report that the short sample occurred as the retention interval increases implies that the remembered duration of an event shrinks with the passage of time. Three other accounts of this phenomenon assume that the result stems from the fact that an event that is short in duration is more like "nothing" than an event that is long in duration. As such, when memories eventually fade to nothing (as they do when the retention interval is long), birds tend to select the better of the two available options (i.e., they report that the short sample was presented). Yet another explanation is that birds have the capacity to transform a nominal discrimination task into a signal detection task. The signal-detection framework has been used to interpret findings from studies on human recognition memory for more than two decades, but its relevance to animal memory has not been widely investigated. Because detection theory offers a theoretical framework common to both species, it could help to facilitate the development of relevant animal models of memory impairment in humans.