title: Interacting Cache memories: evidence for flexible memory use by Western Scrub-Jays (Aphelocoma californica).
abstract: When Western Scrub-Jays (Aphelocoma californica) cached and recovered perishable crickets, N. S. Clayton, K. S. Yu, and A. Dickinson (2001) reported that the jays rapidly learned to search for fresh crickets after a 1-day retention interval (RI) between caching and recovery but to avoid searching for perished crickets after a 4-day RI. In the present experiments, the jays generalized their search preference for crickets to intermediate RIs and used novel information about the rate of decay of crickets presented during the RI to reverse these search preferences at recovery. The authors interpret this reversal as evidence that the birds can integrate information about the caching episode with new information presented during the RI.
authors.affiliation: Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 3EB, United Kingdom. nsc22@cam.ac.uk
authors.forename: Nicola S
authors.initials: NS
authors.lastname: Clayton
authors.forename: Kara Shirley
authors.initials: KS
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.forename: Anthony
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Dickinson
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001070:Appetitive Behavior; D001245:Association Learning; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D005247:Feeding Behavior; D005518:Food Preferences; D012153:Retention, Psychology; D020308:Songbirds / Q000502:physiology*; D013997:Time Factors