Abstract
Black-capped chickadees (Parus atricapillus) and dark-eyed juncos (Junco hyemalis) were required to match to the last item from a series of up to three stimuli differing in both location and color. When rewarded for pecking the target stimulus during the study phase of each series, black-capped chickadees demonstrated proactive interference (PI) from stimuli presented prior to the target, whereas juncos did not. When they made an error, chickadees were more likely than were juncos to choose a distractor from the study series rather than a novel stimulus. When reward was no longer associated with presentation of the final target sample in a series, juncos also suffered PI. These results indicate that chickadees and juncos differ in the degree to which the recency of stimuli and the associative strength of stimuli control correct matching.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
References
Bitterman, M. E. (1975). The comparative analysis of learning.Science,188, 699–709.
Brodbeck, D. R. (1994). Memory for spatial and local cues: A comparison of a storing and a nonstoring species.Animal Learning & Behavior,22, 119–133.
Brodbeck, D. R.,&Shettleworth, S. J. (1995). Matching location and color of a compound stimulus: Comparison of a food-storing and a non-storing bird species.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes,21, 64–77.
Brown, M. F. (1990). The effects of maze-arm length on performance on the radial-arm maze.Animal Learning & Behavior,18, 13–22.
Clayton, N. S. (1995). Comparative studies of food-storing, memory, and the hippocampal formation in parids.Hippocampus,5, 499–510.
Clayton, N. S.,&Krebs, J. R. (1994a). Memory for spatial and objectspecific cues in food-storing and non-storing species of birds.Journal of Comparative Physiology A,174, 371–379.
Clayton, N. S.,&Krebs, J. R. (1994b). One-trial associative memory: Comparison of food-storing and nonstoring species of birds.Animal Learning & Behavior,22, 366–372.
Clayton, N. S.,&Krebs, J. R. (1995). Memory in food-storing birds: From behavior to brain.Current Opinion in Neurobiology,5, 149–154.
Crystal, J. D.,&Shettleworth, S. J. (1994). Spatial list learning in black-capped chickadees.Animal Learning & Behavior,22, 77–83.
Gaffan, D. (1974). Recognition impaired and association intact in the memory of monkeys after transection of the fornix.Journal of Comparative & Physiological Psychology,86, 1100–1109.
Hampton, R. R.,&Shettleworth, S. J. (1996a). Hippocampal lesion impair memory for location but not color in passerine birds.Behavioral Neuroscience,110, 831–835.
Hampton, R. R.,&Shettleworth, S. J. (1996b). Hippocampus and memory in a food-storing and in a nonstoring bird species.Behavioral Neuroscience,110, 946–964.
Healy, S. (1995). Memory for objects and positions: Delayednonmatching-to-sample in storing and non-storing tits.Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology,48B, 179–191.
Kamil, A. C. (1988). A synthetic approach to the study of animal intelligence. In D. W. Leger (Ed.),Nebraska Symposium on Motivation: Vol. 35. Comparative perspectives in modern psychology (pp. 257–308). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Kamil, A. C., Balda, R. P.,&Olson, D. J. (1994). Performance of four seed caching corvid species in the radial-arm maze analog.Journal of Comparative Psychology,108, 385–393.
Kirk, R. E. (1982).Experimental design: Procedures for the behavioral sciences (2nd ed.). Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole.
Krebs, J. R. (1990). Food storing birds: Adaptive specialization in brain and behavior?Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London: Series B,329, 55–62.
Krebs, J. R., Healy, S. D.,&Shettleworth, S. J. (1990). Spatial memory of paridae: Comparison of a storing and a non-storing species, the coal tit,Parus ater, and the great tit,P. major. Animal Behaviour,39, 1127–1137.
Krebs, J. R., Sherry, D. F., Healy, S. D., Perry, V. H.,&Vaccarino, A. L. (1989). Hippocampal specialization in food-storing birds.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,86, 1388–1392.
Macphail, E. M., Good, M.,&Honey, R. C. (1995). Recognition memory in pigeons for stimuli presented repeatedly: Perceptual learning or reduced associative interference?Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology,45B, 13–31.
Mayes, A. R., Pickering, A.,&Fairbairn, A. (1987). Amnesic sensitivity to proactive interference: Its relationship to priming and the causes of amnesia.Neuropsychologia,25, 211–220.
McDonald, R. J.,&White, N. M. (1993). A triple dissociation of memory systems: Hippocampus, amygdala, and dorsal striatum.Behavioral Neuroscience,107, 3–22.
McDonald, R. J.,&White, N. M. (1994). Parallel information processing in the water maze: Evidence for independent memory systems involving dorsal striatum and hippocampus.Behavioral & Neural Biology,61, 260–270.
Olson, D. (1991). Species differences in spatial memory among Clark’s nutcrackers, scrub jays, and pigeons.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes,17, 363–376.
Olson, D., Kamil, A., Balda, R.,&Nims, P. (1995). Performance of four seed-caching corvid species in operant tests of nonspatial and spatial memory.Journal of Comparative Psychology,109, 173–181.
Roberts, W. A.,&Grant, D. S. (1974). Short-term memory in the pigeon with the presentation time precisely controlled.Learning & Motivation,5, 393–408.
Shapiro, M. L., &Olton, D. S. (1994). Hippocampal function and interference. In D. L Schacter & E. Tulving (Eds.),Memory Systems 1994 (pp. 87–117). Cambridge, MA: MIT press.
Sherry, D. F., Vaccarino, A. L., Buckenham, K.,&Herz, R. S. (1989). The hippocampal complex of food-storing birds.Brain, Behavior & Evolution,34, 308–317.
Sherry, D. F., Jacobs, L. F.,&Gaulin, S. J. C. (1992). Spatial memory and adaptive specialization of the hippocampus.Trends in Neurosciences,15, 298–303.
Shettleworth, S. J. (1995). Comparative studies of memory in food storing birds. In E. Alleva, A. Fasolo, H. Lipp, L. Nadel, & L. Ricceri (Eds.),Behavioral brain research in natural and semi-natural settings: Possibilities and perspectives (pp. 159–192). Dordrecht: Kluwer.
White, N. M.,&McDonald, R. J. (1993). Acquisition of a spatial conditioned place preference is impaired by amygdala lesions and improved by fornix lesions.Behavioural Brain Research,55, 269–281.
Winocur, G. (1979). Effects of interference on discrimination learning and recall by rats with hippocampal lesions.Physiology & Behavior,22, 339–345.
Wright, A. A., Urcuioli, R. J., &Sands, S. F. (1986). Proactive interference in animal memory. In D. F. Kendrick, M. Rilling, & R. Denny (Eds.),Theories of animal memory (pp. 101–125). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
This work was supported by a research grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada to the second author. We thank Andrew Gristock and Mike Child for conscientious and dedicated animal care. Tim Jarsky and Joel Grossman helped test the animals.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Hampton, R.R., Shettleworth, S.J. & westwood, R.P. Proactive interference, recency, and associative strength: Comparisons of black-capped chickadees and dark-eyed juncos. Animal Learning & Behavior 26, 475–485 (1998). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03199241
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03199241