ONE-TRIAL ASSOCIATIVE MEMORY IN BLACK-CAPPED CHICKADEES

Black-capped chickadees (Parus atricapillus), birds that store food, inspected feeders in an aviary, 1 of which was baited, and returned after a 5-min retention interval to consume the then-hidden food. In Experiment 1, Ss quickly learned this task but only if different feeders were used on each trial. In Experiment 2, memory for the baited feeder decayed substantially after 24 hr but not after 30 min. In Experiments 3 and 4, there were 4 alternatives to the baited feeder. Ss performed better than chance from the beginning of these experiments. When Ss made errors on their 1st choice, Ss performed better than chance on their 2nd choice. Experiment 4 tested the notion that increasing the cost of inspecting the feeders would reduce errors; however, this did not improve performance.