Short-term incidental memory for irrelevant cues.

A new analysis of previously published studies of delayed matching-to-sample (DMTS) water-escape and the results of a new food-reinforced discrimination study are presented. In both cases, male Sprague-Dawley rats demonstrated short-term incidental memory for irrelevant cues in the context of two-alternative forced-choice problems that required learning about relevant cues. In the DMTS experiments, relevant and irrelevant cues were place or brightness.