Can birds transfer knowledge of a spatially ordered list to a hierarchically ordered one?

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SPATIALLY ORDERED LIST OF 7 ITEMS

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Training to learn spatially ordered list: PHASE 1

Bird is rewarded for choosing item in correct position (yellow square)

Bird sees single items in correct spatial location. Each stimuliIs presented an equal number of times in each session.

7 stimuli, each for 5 or 6 trials/session. 36 total trials per session.

Example: PHASE 1, trial 2

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Training to learn spatially ordered list: PHASE 2

Trial 1Bird rewarded for choosing item in correct position (yellow square)

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PHASE 2: TRIAL 2

And so on… trials are intermixed such that each stimuli is presented an equal number of times per session (6 trials/session)

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PHASE 3: Continue training of phase 2, but insert probes to test knowledge of spatial list.

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PHASE 4: Learning hierarchical list by dyadic pairs.

Group 1: hierarchical list matches spatial listGroup 2: hierarchical list is ordered differently from spatial list

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PHASE 4: Learning hierarchical list by dyadic pairs.

Group 1: hierarchical list matches spatial listGroup 2: hierarchical list is ordered differently from spatial list (novel combinations of adjacent pairs)

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PHASE 5: dyadic pair presentations with probes to test for transitive inference

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Is there some mechanism by which spatially close items are associated together? If so, does this association transfer to hierarchical knowledge?

PROBLEM? If birds have bias for right or left side during training of spatial list, will this lead to differential reinforcement? If so, how to solve this problem? Add additional training on item positions that so that reinforcement histories are equalized?