Echoic memory in pigeons

It is unknown whether birds are able to retain the memory of purely sensory auditory information such as white noise over an extended period of time. In a Pavlovian heart rate conditioning paradigm, four pigeons were trained to associate a mild electric shock with periodic random waveforms, and no shock with aperiodic noise. Periodic waveform detection requires echoic memory, i.e., the online retention of a waveform pattern over a limited time. Starting with 40 ms, the waveform period was increased after successful learning until no significant stimulus discrimination could be found. Significant discrimination was achieved at periods of up to 2560 ms. This is the first demonstration that echoic memory performance in birds is clearly superior to cats and gerbils, and comparable to naive human performance.