Influence of intertrial interval duration on the intertrial agreement effect in delayed matching-to-sample with pigeons

Abstract

Accuracy on even-numbered trials was assessed as a function of (1) the relation between the sample on the immediately preceding trial and that on the current trial and (2) the length of the intertrial interval (ITI) that intervened between odd- and even-numbered trials. A relatively long interval intervened between pairs of trials in the clustered-dyads procedure, whereas this interval was equal to the ITI in the massed-trials procedure. Both procedures revealed an intertrial agreement effect in that accuracy was higher when the sample on the immediately preceding trial was identical rather than opposite. A decrease in the magnitude of this effect at longer ITIs was apparent only in the clustered-dyads procedure. The insensitivity of the intertrial agreement effect to variations in ITI in the massed-trials procedure may reflect floor effects and the carryover of memory from multiple prior trials that mask the true magnitude of the intertrial agreement effect at short ITIs.