Papers in the Biological Sciences
Date of this Version
1993
Abstract
Two groups of Clark’s nutcrackers (Nucifraga columbiana) were trained to use either a stay or shift response strategy in a radial maze analogue. Each trial had a preretention stage, a retention interval, and a postretention test. In Experiment 1, acquisition with a 5-min retention interval was studied. Response strategy did not affect the rate at which the task was learned. Performance following longer retention intervals was tested in Experiments 2-4. Changes in retention intervals were presented in trial blocks of increasing duration in Experiment 2 and were randomly presented between trials in Experiment 3. Experiment 4 extended the retention interval to 24 hr. No difference in performance was found between the 2 groups in any of these experiments. These results suggest a flexible relationship between spatial memory and response requirement in food-hoarding birds for at least 1 spatial memory task.
Comments
Published in Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes19:2 (1993), pp. 138-148; doi: 10.1037/0097-7403.19.2.138 Copyright © 1993 American Psychological Association. Used by permission.