Evidence for Common Coding in Many-To-One Matching: Retention, Intertrial Interference and Transfer

Two experiments indicated that pigeons commonly code samples associated with same comparison in many-to-one matching. Experiment 1 showed that retention was similar for pigeons matching four sample stimuli (two hues and two lines) to a different pair of comparisons (hues or lines). Accuracy was slightly higher with hue than with line samples, but this did not interact with delay. Alternative samples from each dimension and associatively different samples from the different dimensions both produced intertrial interference. In Experiment 2, pigeons learned new comparison associations to two samples from a prior many-to-one task. Later, their ability to match the remaining samples to the new comparisons was tested. Positive transfer occurred when samples previously paired with the same comparison replaced one another. Negative transfer occurred when opposing samples were interchanged. Apparently, the associatively related samples in many-to-one matching evoke similar representations