Spatial Memory and the Performance of Rats and Pigeons in the Radial-arm Maze

Authors

• Alan B. Bond, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
• Robert G. Cook, University of California, Berkeley
• Marvin R. Lamb, University of California, Berkeley

Document Type

Article

Date of this Version

1981

Citation

Animal Learning and Behavior (1981) 9(4): 575-580

Comments

Copyright 1981, Psychonomic Society. Used by permission

Abstract

The resource-distribution hypothesis states that the ability of an animal to remember the spatial location of past events is related to the typical distribution of food resources for the species. It appears to predict that Norway rats would perform better than domestic pigeons in tasks requiring spatial event memory. Pigeons, tested in an eight-arm radial maze, exhibited no more than half of the memory capacity observed in rats in the same apparatus and may not have used spatial memory at all. The results were interpreted as supporting the hypothesis.