Short-term retention of "surprising" events following different training conditions

Abstract

Terry and Wagner (1975) have suggested that short-term retention of information about an event is enhanced if the occurrence of the event is surprising. To investigate this idea, we trained two groups of pigeons in a preparatory-releaser procedure in which half the trials started with the presentation of food (the preparatory event). The preparatory food presensation was signaled by an 8-sec white keylight in the signaled, but not in the unsignaled, group. After a retention interval, varying between 2 and 32 sec, the releaser stimulus (CS R), a red keylight, was presented for 8 sec in the absence of any reinforcement. The remaining trials were initiated by the presentation of CS R, and the first peck occurring 8 sec after the onset of CS R was reinforced by food. The preparatory event controlled responding to CS R at the short retention interval, with the level of control declining systematically with increasing retention intervals. On probe test trials, the presentation of the preparatory food event was preceded by a stimulus that had previously been paired (CS+) or unpaired with food (CS-). Discriminative responding to CSr was better following CS- than following CS+ in the unsignaled, but not the signaled, group. These results suggest that the enhanced retention following surprising preparatory events reflects a generalization decrement induced by changing the signaling conditions between training and testing. © 1980 Psychonomic Society, Inc.