Pigeons, Rats, and Humans Show Analogous Misinformation

Abstract

In three experiments, we show that pigeons, rats and humans can be influenced by misleading postevent information in ways analogous to findings in the human memory distortion literature. We used a delayed matching to sample analog of the eyewitness testimony procedure from Loftus et al.(1978), and varied the length of the delay between event and exposure to post event information(PEI). We also varied the nature of PEI so that it was consistent with the event information, inconsistent, or neutral. In Experiment 1, pigeons’ memory performance for colored lights was influenced by the presence of another colored light. In Experiment 2, rats’ memory performance for lever position was influenced by position-related cue lights. In Experiment 3, we verified the validity of our analog procedure by having human subjects remember kaleidoscope images. Despite differences in species and the nature of the stimuli, all three experiments replicated key findings in the literature: memory accuracy was highest when consistent PEI was presented at the end of a delay, and lowest when inconsistent PEI presented at the end of a delay interval. PEI had no effect when presented at the beginning of a delay.