OBJECT PERMANENCE AND WORKING-MEMORY IN CATS (FELIS-CATUS)

Cats (Felis catus) find an object when it is visibly moved behind a su ccession of screens. However, when the object is moved behind a contai ner and is invisibly transferred from the container to the back of a s creen, cats try to find the object at or near the container rather tha n at the true hiding place. Four experiments were conducted to study s earch behavior and working?memory in visible and invisible displacemen t tests of object permanence. Experiment 1 compared performance in sin gle and in double visible displacement trials. Experiment 2 analyzed s earch behavior in invisible displacement tests and in analogs using a transparent container. Experiments 3 and 4 tested predictions made fro m Experiments 1 and 2 in a new situation of object permanence. Results showed that only the position changes that cats have directly perceiv ed are encoded and activated in working memory, because they are unabl e to represent or infer invisible movements.