Meyers-Manor Julia E, Overmier J Bruce, Hatfield Daniel W, Croswell Jo
Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota.
J Exp Psychol Anim Learn Cogn. 2014 Apr;40(2):225-40. doi: 10.1037/xan0000016.
In an ever-changing world, the ability to track what significant events occur and where and when is beneficial to a variety of animal species. The purpose of the present studies was to assess the presence of this ability to track what-where-when memory in pigeons based both on when during the day the events occurred and how long ago events occurred. In these studies, pigeons were trained to discriminate between two foods that differed in quality (what), making one more "attractive" than the other. The birds were required to alter their choice of keylights (where) to get these differential foods based on the time of day (Experiments 1-2) or how long ago (Experiments 3-5) they were in a session (when). Pigeons were able to correctly choose the key that yielded the "attractive" food using both time of day and how long ago, indicating a what-where-when memory. However, the pigeons failed to transfer this knowledge to a novel situation, showing limited flexibility in use of the learned what-where-when information. These findings suggest that pigeons have abilities to track what-where-when events as do caching birds and other animal species, but perhaps represented in a more rigid manner.
在一个不断变化的世界中，追踪重大事件发生的地点、时间以及事件本身的能力对多种动物都有益处。本研究的目的是基于事件发生的白天时段以及事件发生的时间间隔，评估鸽子追踪事件-地点-时间记忆的这种能力是否存在。在这些研究中，鸽子接受训练以区分两种质量不同的食物（事件本身），使其中一种比另一种更“有吸引力”。要求鸽子根据一天中的时间（实验1 - 2）或它们处于某个阶段的时间间隔（实验3 - 5）（时间）改变对按键灯的选择（地点），以获取这些不同的食物。鸽子能够利用一天中的时间和时间间隔正确选择能得到“有吸引力”食物的按键，这表明它们具有事件-地点-时间记忆。然而，鸽子未能将这种知识迁移到新的情境中，在运用所学的事件-地点-时间信息时表现出有限的灵活性。这些发现表明，鸽子具有追踪事件-地点-时间的能力，与贮藏食物的鸟类和其他动物物种一样，但可能是以一种更刻板的方式体现。
