Abstract
The resource-distribution hypothesis states that the ability of an animal to remember the spatial location of past events is related to the typical distribution of food resources for the species. It appears to predict that Norway rats would perform better than domestic pigeons in tasks requiring spatial event memory. Pigeons, tested in an eight-arm radial maze, exhibited no more than half of the memory capacity observed in rats in the same apparatus and may not have used spatial memory at all. The results were interpreted as supporting the hypothesis.
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Funds for this study were provided in part by a National Institute of Mental Health Research Service Award, No. 1 T32 MH15860-01, and by NIMH Grant MH22153 and NSF Grant BNS7908839 to D. A. Riley.
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Bond, A.B., Cook, R.G. & Lamb, M.R. Spatial memory and the performance of rats and pigeons in the radial-arm maze. Animal Learning & Behavior 9, 575–580 (1981). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03209793
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03209793