ABSTRACT
This chapter explores First, based on their delayed matching to sample (DMTS) performance our animals showed a remarkable Short-Term Memory (STM) capacity, in the order of minutes. The STM capacity of our animals as measured by DMTS was not a static quantity, as one might expect on the assumption that it mirrored a basic structural property. Instead, it increased, seemingly without end, with accumulated practice. Substantial retention in DMTS tasks with delay intervals of two or more minutes has also been reported for rhesus monkeys and a dolphin. The other facts views that the kind of memory studied in DMTS and related animal retention tasks was more likely based on temporal discrimination processes than on the limited-capacity storage mechanisms postulated for human STM. The interpretation of the effect of removing the animal from the apparatus during the delay period is that this operation serves to reduce the aversiveness of the delay period.
