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Updated: Apr 4, 2026

A Method for Investigating Change Blindness in Pigeons Columba Livia

A Method for Investigating Change Blindness in Pigeons Columba Livia

Published on: September 7, 2018

Pigeon visual short-term memory directly compared to primates.

Anthony A Wright¹, L Caitlin Elmore²

¹Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy, University of Texas Health Science Center, The University of Texas Health Science Center Medical School at Houston, 6431 Fannin Street, Suite 7.174, Houston, TX 77030 United States.

Behavioural Processes

|September 8, 2015

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Pigeons exhibit visual short-term memory capabilities comparable to monkeys, though less accurate than humans. Despite capacity differences, both species demonstrate similar memory decline patterns with increasing visual load.

Keywords:

Change detection Humans Monkeys Pigeons Visual short-term memory Visual working memory

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Area of Science:

Cognitive Psychology
Comparative Psychology
Neuroscience

Background:

Investigating visual short-term memory (VSTM) across species is crucial for understanding cognitive evolution.
Previous research established VSTM capacities in humans and monkeys, but limited data exists for avian species.

Purpose of the Study:

To quantify and compare the visual short-term memory capacity of pigeons to that of monkeys and humans.
To determine if functional relationships governing VSTM performance are conserved across these species.

Main Methods:

Pigeons were trained on a delayed color change detection task with array sizes ranging from 2 to 6 items.
Experimental parameters (stimuli, display, timing) were matched to prior studies on monkeys and humans.
Performance was analyzed using signal detection theory (d') and fitted to an inverse power-law function.

Main Results:

Pigeons performed better than monkeys but less accurately than humans across all array sizes.
Calculated memory capacities were ≤1 item for pigeons and monkeys, and 2.5 items for humans.
VSTM performance decline with memory load followed a conserved inverse power-law function across all three species.

Conclusions:

Despite quantitative differences in memory capacity, pigeons, monkeys, and humans exhibit similar fundamental processing of visual short-term memory.
The conserved inverse power-law relationship suggests shared underlying neural mechanisms for VSTM across these diverse species.
This study highlights the value of cross-species comparisons in elucidating universal principles of cognition.