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Thinking outside of the box: transfer of shape-based reorientation across the boundary of an arena

Buckley, Matthew G.; Smith, Alastair D.; Haselgrove, Mark

Authors

Matthew G. Buckley

Alastair D. Smith

MARK HASELGROVE mark.haselgrove@nottingham.ac.uk
Professor of Experimental Psychology



Abstract

The way in which human and non-human animals represent the shape of their environments remains a contentious issue. According to local theories of shape learning, organisms encode the local geometric features of the environment that signal a goal location. In contrast, global theories of shape learning suggest that organisms encode the overall shape of the environment. There is, however, a surprising lack of evidence to support this latter claim, despite the fact that common behaviours seem to require encoding of the global-shape of an environment. We tested one such behaviour in 5 experiments, in which human participants were trained to navigate to a hidden goal on one side of a virtual arena (e.g. the inside) before being required to find the same point on the alternative side (e.g. the outside). Participants navigated to the appropriate goal location, both when inside and outside the virtual arena, but only when the shape of the arena remained the same between training and test (Experiments 1a and 1b). When the arena shape was transformed between these stages, participants were lost (Experiments 2a and 2b). When training and testing was conducted on the outside of two different-shaped arenas that shared local geometric cues participants once again explored the appropriate goal location (Experiment 3). These results provide core evidence that humans encode a global representation of the overall shape of the environments in, or around, which they navigate.

Citation

Buckley, M. G., Smith, A. D., & Haselgrove, M. (2016). Thinking outside of the box: transfer of shape-based reorientation across the boundary of an arena. Cognitive Psychology, 87, 53-87. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogpsych.2016.04.001

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Apr 20, 2016
Online Publication Date May 28, 2016
Publication Date Jun 30, 2016
Deposit Date May 21, 2016
Publicly Available Date Mar 29, 2024
Journal Cognitive Psychology
Print ISSN 0010-0285
Electronic ISSN 1095-5623
Publisher Elsevier
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 87
Pages 53-87
DOI https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogpsych.2016.04.001
Keywords Geometric module; spatial learning; navigation; global; local; reorientation
Public URL https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/784373

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