Performance of Four Seed-Caching Corvid Species in Operant Tests of Nonspatial and Spatial Memory

Deborah J. Olson, Alan C. Kamil, Russell P. Balda, Pamela J. Nims

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

119 Scopus citations

Abstract

The performance of 4 seed-caching corvid species was tested using 2 different operant non-matching tasks. These species differ in their dependence on stored food, and differences in spatial memory tests have been correlated with better performance by the more cache-dependent species. Acquisition and retention of a color non-matching-to-sample task was tested in Experiment 1. Acquisition of the color task was not correlated with cache dependence, and no differences between species in performance during memory testing were found. Acquisition and retention of an operant spatial non-matching-to-sample task was tested in Experiment 2. Species differences in the spatial task were found for acquisition and during retention testing. The influence of natural history on the evolution of memory is discussed.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)173-181
Number of pages9
JournalJournal of Comparative Psychology
Volume109
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - Jun 1995

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
  • Psychology (miscellaneous)

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Performance of Four Seed-Caching Corvid Species in Operant Tests of Nonspatial and Spatial Memory'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this