ABSTRACT
The research I discuss represents a blending of two areas of investigation, spatial memory and foraging. Beginning with the seminal article of Olton and Samuelson (1976), a number of experiments have been carried out on the radial maze to find out how rats and other animals remember and forget spatial information. This research has revealed that rats can remember a large number of locations visited (Olton, Collison, & Werz, 1977; Roberts, 1979) and that the format of memory is maplike and based on extramaze visual cues (Mazmanian & Roberts, 1983; Suzuki, Augerinos, & Black, 1980). Although rats can remember locations visited on the radial maze over several hours (Beatty & Shavalia, 1980), forgetting can arise from both proactive and retroactive interference caused by other spatial experiences (Roberts, 1981; Roberts & Dale, 1981).
