Research reportAn associative analysis of object memory

- Synopsis given of model of associative memory whose origin is as a theory of Pavlovian conditioning.
- Object recognition tasks are explicable in terms of the associative memory model.
- Experimental predictions from the associative model are found to be supported.

Different aspects of recognition memory in rodents are commonly assessed using variants of the spontaneous object recognition procedure in which animals explore objects that differ in terms of their novelty, recency, or where they have previously been presented. The present article describes three standard variants of this procedure, and outlines a theory of associative learning, SOP [1] which can offer an explanation of performance on all three types of task. The implications of this for theoretical interpretations of recognition memory and the procedures used to explore it are discussed.