Serial Memory

Wixted博士的研究项目旨在加强我们对动物记忆的理解，并推进动物和人类记忆的比较分析。具体来说，这个项目将调查鸽子对快速连续呈现的一系列视觉图像的记忆能力。这个过程类似于人类记忆研究中经常使用的一种方法，在这种研究中，人们被要求记住一系列单词。我们主要关心的是，动物是否像人类一样，能更好地记住一系列开头或结尾的内容，而不是中间的内容。在以人类为研究对象的研究中，这些“首因”和“近因”效应是如此普遍，以至于它们可以被视为人类短期记忆的合法属性。然而，在对动物的研究中，一些研究人员获得了强大的首因效应，而另一些研究人员则报告了其明显的缺失。对这些不一致的发现的一种解释诉诸于“干扰”的概念。根据这一观点，当动物在一次实验中被要求记住许多清单时，它们会感到困惑，因为有些项目在不同的清单上反复出现。事实上，唯一一项在鸟类身上观察到首因效应的研究将实验安排得这样一种方式，即实验项目在一个阶段内永远不会重复。对于这些不一致的发现，另一种解释是不同研究在时间变量上的差异，比如奖励延迟。Wixted博士将独立地改变奖励的干扰和延迟，以努力阐明在动物中观察到首要效应的条件。除了帮助解决明显相互矛盾的实证研究结果这一直接目标之外，Wixted博士的研究结果最终可能会为相关动物模型奠定基础，从而促进人类短期记忆障碍的研究。

Dr. Wixted's research project is designed to enhance our understanding of memory in animals and to advance the comparative analysis of animal and human memory. Specifically, this project will investigate how well pigeons can remember a series of visual images presented in rapid succession. This procedure is analogous to one often used in human-memory studies in which people are asked to remember a list of words. Of primary concern is whether animals, like humans, remember items at the beginning or end of a series better than they remember middle items. In studies with human subjects, these "primacy" and "recency" effects are so commonly observed that they may be regarded as lawful properties of human short-term memory. In studies with animals, however, some researchers have obtained a robust primacy effect while others have reported its conspicuous absence. One explanation of these inconsistent findings appeals to the concept of "interference." According to this view, animals become confused when given many lists to remember in a single session because some of the items appear over and over again on different lists. Indeed, the only study to observe a primacy effect in birds arranged the experiment in such a way that items were never repeated within a session. An alternative explanation for the inconsistent findings appeals to differences between studies in temporal variables, such as delay of reward. Dr. Wixted will independently vary interference and delay of reward in an effort to clarify the conditions under which a primacy effect may be observed in animals. In addition to the immediate goal of helping to resolve apparently conflicting empirical findings, the results of Dr. Wixted's investigation may eventually facilitate the study of short-term memory disorders in humans by establishing the groundwork for relevant animal models.