This task is similar in logic to the Novel Object Recognition Task as it exploits the natural tendency of most mammals to pay greater attention to novelty than to familiarity. Instead of memory for object identity, however, this task assesses the memory for the location of objects.

In our lab, there are typically three phases in an object location recognition experiment – Habituation, Sampling, and Probe.

1. Habituation. We familiarize the rats four times to the open field, once per day for four consecutive days. There are no objects in the open field during Habituation.
2. Sampling. We typically use two identical copies of an object and place them into opposing corners during the Sampling trials. The location of the objects are constant. The number and the duration of the Sampling trials depends on the experimental question.
3. Probe. One of the objects is moved to a new place, the other one stays where it was during Sampling. Typically, we move the object from a corner to the middle of a wall, i.e., midway between two corners.

If the animal recognizes that the object moved to a new location, we expect it to explore it more than the object at the familiar location.