Effects of varying trial distribution, intra- and extramaze cues, and amount of reward on proactive interference in the radial maze

Differential effects of massed and spaced training on place and response learning: A memory systems perspective

“…Salafia et al, 1973;Domjan, 1980) and humans (e.g., Abrams and Grice, 1976;McBride and Payne, 1979;Glenberg, 1992). On the other hand, the finding that a relative massing of trials benefits spatial learning appears at first glance inconsistent with previous research, which has shown in contrast a benefit of spaced training in various spatial tasks (e.g., Goodrick, 1973;Cohen et al, 1994), including spatial learning in the water maze (Morris and Doyle, 1985;Kraemer and Randall, 1995;Spreng et al, 2002;Commins et al, 2003). One possible reason for this inconsistency is that previous studies used different parameters to define massed and spaced training conditions.…”

The Effects of Reward Omission and Change on Proactive Interference in Spatial Alternation

“…Even though the same target stimuli (i.e., maze locations) recurred over trials, interference could be reduced by the presence or absence of stimuli that accompanied the target. The present findings are consistent with previous studies that showed that varying the type of reward (Dallal & Meck, 1990) or changing stimuli within the maze (Cohen, Reid, & Chew, 1994) reduce Pi in the radial maze.…”

“…Performance under massed trial conditions was better when different rewards were presented in various maze arms, such as food pellets versus seeds, rather than using a single reward in all arms (Dallal & Meck, 1990). However, Pi was not affected when different numbers of pellets were given in the maze arms (Cohen et al, 1994). in the present research a more dramatic manipulation, omitting the reward, was employed to try to overcome Pi.…”

“…Given a limited set of stimuli that vary as correct and incorrect alternatives from trial to trial, the memory of the current trial's stimulus overlaps with traces from previous trials. Stimulus confusion should be reduced if the to-be-remembered stimulus is altered to distinguish it from memory of other occurrences of the stimulus (e.g., Béracochéa & Jafford, 1987;Cohen, Reid & Chew, 1994) The purpose of the present experiments was to test whether reward change or omission would reduce Pi in a spatial task. Previous studies of reward variation have produced inconsistent results.…”

Visual environment and delay affect cache retrieval accuracy in a food-storing rodent

“…Two factors that have been shown separately to influence spatial memory in artificial tasks such as the radial arm maze are the latency between learning and testing, with retrieval intervals leading to reduced accuracy (Roberts & Dale, 1981), and visual landmarks in the learning environment, with presence of landmarks leading to better accuracy (Cohen, Reid, & Chew, 1994). We are including as landmarks all conspicuous, distinct objects in the environment, both distal and near.…”