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 (CSR), a red keylight, was presented for 8 sec in the absence of any reinforcement. The remaining trials were initiated by the presentation of CSR, and the first peck occurring 8 sec after the onset of CSR was reinforced by food. The preparatory event controlled responding to CSR 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.