Feeney Miranda C, Roberts William A, Sherry David F
Department of Psychology, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada.
Anim Cogn. 2009 Nov;12(6):767-77. doi: 10.1007/s10071-009-0236-x. Epub 2009 May 23.
Episodic memory is the ability to remember personally experienced past events (Tulving in Organization of memory. Academic Press, San Diego, pp. 381-403, 1972). In non-human animals, the behavioural criterion for episodic-like memory is remembering "what" occurred in conjunction with "when" and "where" (Clayton and Dickinson in Nature 395:272-274, 1998). We conducted tests for "what, where, and when" memory in a food-storing bird, the black-capped chickadee (Poecile atricapillus). In Experiment 1, chickadees found sunflower seeds and mealworms in concealed sites in their home cage. Birds later re-visited these sites after either a short (3 h) or long (123 h) retention interval. Chickadees normally prefer mealworms, but at the long retention interval mealworms were degraded in taste and appearance. Chickadees showed some memory for what kind of food they had encountered and where, but no memory for when food had previously been found. Experiment 2 followed a similar procedure, except that chickadees searched for hidden sunflower seeds and mealworms in trees in an indoor aviary. These more natural conditions increased both the spatial scale of the task and the effort required to find food. In this experiment, birds showed evidence for all three components of what-where-when memory. Unlike some previous studies of episodic-like memory, birds' behaviour cannot be accounted for by differential memory strength for more recent events. The results show that memory for what, where, and when occurs in food-storing birds outside the corvid family, does not require food caching or retrieval, and that remembering "when" can depend on the nature of the task.
情景记忆是指记住个人亲身经历过的过去事件的能力（图尔文著《记忆的组织》，学术出版社，圣地亚哥，第381 - 403页，1972年）。在非人类动物中，类情景记忆的行为标准是记住“什么”事件与“何时”以及“何地”同时发生（克莱顿和迪金森著《自然》395:272 - 274，1998年）。我们对一种储食鸟类——黑头山雀（Poecile atricapillus）进行了“什么、何地、何时”记忆测试。在实验1中，黑头山雀在其笼舍的隐蔽地点找到葵花籽和粉虫。之后，鸟类在短（3小时）或长（123小时）的保持间隔后再次访问这些地点。黑头山雀通常更喜欢粉虫，但在长保持间隔时粉虫的味道和外观变差了。黑头山雀对它们遇到过哪种食物以及在哪里有一定记忆，但对之前何时找到食物没有记忆。实验2遵循类似程序，不同之处在于黑头山雀在室内鸟舍的树上寻找隐藏的葵花籽和粉虫。这些更自然的条件增加了任务的空间尺度以及寻找食物所需的努力。在这个实验中，鸟类表现出了“什么 - 何地 - 何时”记忆所有三个成分的证据。与之前一些类情景记忆研究不同，鸟类的行为不能用对更近事件的不同记忆强度来解释。结果表明，储食鸟类中除鸦科外也存在对“什么、何地、何时”的记忆，不需要食物储存或取回，并且记住“何时”可能取决于任务的性质。
