AN EVALUATION OF THE ROLE OF DUAL CODING IN MEDIATING THE EFFECT OF INCORRECTLY CUEING THE COMPARISON DIMENSION IN DELAYED MATCHING IN PIGEONS

Pigeons were trained on delayed matching-to-sample trials in which red and green sample stimuli were equally often followed by color comparisons and by line-orientation comparisons. The color samples were preceded and accompanied by cues (a triangle or a black dot) that signaled whether the comparisons on that trial would be colors or lines. Length of the retention interval was manipulated during testing, and probe trials were included on which the dimension of the comparison stimuli either was cued incorrectly or was not cued. Accuracy on incorrectly cued and on no-cue trials was less than that on correctly cued trials, and the magnitude of this effect was not influenced by the length of the retention interval. Accuracy on incorrectly cued and on no-cue trials was equivalent, and was greater than chance. The data are inconsistent with two dual-coding interpretations of the effects of incorrectly cuing the dimension of the comparison stimuli in which it is held that both retrospective and prospective sample coding occurs in this task. © 1990 Psychonomic Society, Inc.