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Explicit memories, also known as declarative memories, are consciously remembered, recalled, and reported. Studying for a chemistry exam involves material that will become part of explicit memory. There are two types of explicit memory: episodic and semantic.
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A Real-world What-Where-When Memory Test
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What, where and when: deconstructing memory.

Rachael E S Marshall1, T Andrew Hurly, Jenny Sturgeon

  • 1School of Psychology, University of St Andrews, , St Andrews, UK, School of Biology, University of St Andrews, , St Andrews, UK, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Lethbridge, , Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada, Institute of Evolutionary Biology, University of Edinburgh, , Edinburgh, UK.

Proceedings. Biological Sciences
|October 11, 2013
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Hummingbirds demonstrated reconstructive memory, recalling event details like color, location, and time. This suggests a hierarchical memory system where "when" information is harder to recall than "what" or "where".

Keywords:
cognitionepisodic-like memoryhummingbirdmemory reconstructionwhat–where–when

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Area of Science:

  • Comparative psychology
  • Animal cognition
  • Neuroscience

Background:

  • Episodic memory, the ability to recall specific past events (what, where, when), is a hallmark of human cognition.
  • Understanding episodic-like memory in animals provides insights into the evolution and neural basis of memory.
  • Episodic memory is considered reconstructive, implying its components can be recalled with varying fidelity.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the reconstructive nature of episodic-like memory in hummingbirds.
  • To determine if the 'what', 'where', and 'when' components of a memory task are dissociable in hummingbirds.
  • To explore the hierarchy of memory recall for different event components in a non-primate species.

Main Methods:

  • Hummingbirds were trained on a memory task where reward availability was signaled by color (what), location (where), and time of day/sequence (when).
  • Performance was analyzed to assess the recall accuracy and interdependencies of the 'what', 'where', and 'when' components.
  • A hierarchical analysis was used to identify differences in memory strength for each component.

Main Results:

  • Hummingbirds recalled the 'what', 'where', and 'when' components of the event more often than predicted by chance.
  • A clear hierarchy in memory recall was observed, with 'when' information being the most challenging to remember.
  • 'What' component errors were more readily corrected, suggesting greater flexibility in recalling this aspect.
  • 'When' information appeared to be encoded as a combined representation of time of day and sequence.

Conclusions:

  • Hummingbirds exhibit reconstructive episodic-like memory, dissociating and recalling different components of past events.
  • The findings support a hierarchical model of memory recall, with varying degrees of accessibility for different memory elements.
  • Deconstructive approaches to studying memory components offer a valuable framework for comparing episodic and episodic-like memory across species.