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Space

Space. Psychology 3906. Introduction. Vitally important Virtually ubiquitous How is it represented How is it used?. Path Integration. Simplest form of navigation that uses memory Cataglyphis , the Long Legged Desert Ant Twisting outgoing path, but a direct path home. Path Integration.

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Space

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  1. Space Psychology 3906

  2. Introduction • Vitally important • Virtually ubiquitous • How is it represented • How is it used?

  3. Path Integration • Simplest form of navigation that uses memory • Cataglyphis, the Long Legged Desert Ant • Twisting outgoing path, but a direct path home.

  4. Path Integration • Animal Stores direction and distance • Simple vector mathematics • Animal must maintain a running calculation • Error will be cumulative • How could it be improved?

  5. Path Integration and Landmarks • While ‘integrating’ the animal could, periodically, take a fix. • Probably from the stars or the sun • Clock shift experiments show this to be true! • Same thing sailors used to do with a sextant (or a GPS today) • But stellar position changes over time, animal cannot have stellar positions hardwired!

  6. Beacons and Landmarks • A beacon directs behaviour towards it • A landmark points toward a goal, along with other cues • Both are used by many animals • There have been some great strides made in understanding various species’ use of landmarks in the last 20 years

  7. Bees!! • So, the bee seems to be matching the SIZE of the retinal image with the size of the image in memory • Colour change has no effect • Making the landmark a ‘wireframe’ has no effect Training Half size test Double Size test

  8. Two Landmarks Training Stretch Test • Bees are sort of half using angular information • 3 Peak places of search in the Stretch test • Collett, Cartwright, Cheng and their colleagues Rotation Test

  9. Landmark Use in Pigeons • Ken Cheng’s (1989) work Landmark Goal

  10. Tests of Pigeon Landmark Use • Animal searches along the same axis of landmark shift • Does not COMPLETELY follow the landmark • But, does not shift search in the other direction Landmark Search

  11. Further tests of…. • Now the shift is up down, so the animal searches in the ‘up/down’ axis Landmark Search

  12. The Vector Sum Model • Cheng concluded that the pigeons must be adding self – goal and goal to landmark vectors. • This is the only model that explains the search patterns • Eureka!

  13. How do we know they are averaging vectors? • Ken Cheng is like way smart • Basically made two predictions • Direction averaging vs vector averaging • Vectors!

  14. Environmental Shape • Ken Cheng rules the universe • Cheng (1986) got the ball rolling • Or the cocoa puff, as the case may be… • Basically, he found that rats would use geometric information to locate food in a rectangular arena • Most of their errors were to rotations of the originally baited location

  15. Cheng (1986) • He then applied featural information • walls • corners • The rats still made errors, though most of these were rotational errors • He concluded that the rats were responding to the geometry of the box.

  16. Hermer and Spelke (1994) • Tried the Cheng task with toddlers and adults • Disoriented the subjects • Using a cue • Toddlers are not unlike rats • Adults are different, seem to follow the cue • Same in Pike (2001)

  17. Brodbeck, Spracklin and Pike (2003) • We decided to rotate the object • A rectangle on a computer monitor • Subjects (or participants, or whatever..) were shown a red dot on a black rectangle • The rectangle was spun about the middle • Dot faded • Where was the dot?

  18. Uncued Test Results

  19. Cued Rectangle Results

  20. Uncued Square

  21. Cued Square

  22. So if it is all modular • Well if it is we need integration of information right • So the spatial is just, perhaps, one component of the cognitive map • Different parts coming together to form a (potentially) hierarchical representation

  23. Brodbeck, 1994 • Chickadees would find a seed in a feeder • Usually return later and eat it • Move them around to dissociate colour and spatial location • The chickadees responded last to the correctly coloured feeder • Non storing Dark Eyed Juncos responded to all three cue types equally

  24. Tests of cognitive mapping • Probably the coolest experiment ever to test the idea of a maplike representation was done by Jim Gould • You cannot interpret his results without resorting to mapping

  25. Conclusions • Spatial stuff is well studied • Great example of modularity • Many comparisons have been made, more will be made

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