Enhancement of Short-Term Retention in Rats with Pretest Cues: Effects of the Training-Cueing Interval and the Specific Cueing Treatment

Abstract

The present studies represent an initial analysis of variables controlling cueing effects in a short-term retention paradigm. In the first two experiments, retention performance by rats in a delayed alternation paradigm was shown to decrease as the delay interval was lengthened. In both experiments, a pretest cueing procedure was shown to reduce this retention deficit; however, the effectiveness of the cueing procedure did not change as a function of the acquisition-cueing interval. In Experiment 3 it was demonstrated that the specific cueing procedure used in Experiments 1 and 2 was more effective in alleviating forgetting than was exposure to the cues an animal normally encounters on a retention test. This latter finding was offered as a possible explanation for the results of Experiments 1 and 2.