Abstract
Experiment 1 compared food-storing marsh tits and nonstoring blue tits, and Experiment 2 compared food-storing jays and nonstoring jackdaws, in a one-trial associative memory task, Birds obtained a reward by returning to the site where they had eaten part of the reward 30 min earlier. In “visible” versions, the reward was visible in Phase 1 but hidden in Phase 2 so that the bird had to search for it; in “hidden” versions, the reward was hidden in both phases. No species differences were found in performance in the visible version. However, in the hidden version, the 2 storers preferentially returned to rewarded sites, whereas nonstorers preferentially returned to sites that had been visited in Phase 1, irrespective of whether or not they contained a reward. This suggests that storers differ from nonstorers in the way they discriminate between remembered events.
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This research was supported by a grant from the Agricultural and Food Research Council to N.S.C. and by grants from the Royal Society and the Science and Engineering Research Council to J.R.K. We are extremely grateful to David Wilson for technical assistance; without his skill and support, this work would not have been possible. We thank Dave Brodbeck, Rob Hampton, Sue Healy, Chris Hitchcock, Euan Macphail, Sara Shettleworth, Ian Todd, and Rob Willson for valuable comments on the manuscript, and David Gaffan, Nick Rawlins, and Edmund Rolls for helpful discussion.
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Clayton, N.S., Krebs, J.R. One-trial associative memory: comparison of food-storing and nonstoring species of birds. Animal Learning & Behavior 22, 366–372 (1994). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03209155
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03209155