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Failure to demonstrate short-cutting in a replication and extension of Tolman et al.’s spatial learning experiment with humans

Wilson, Stuart P.; Wilson, Paul N.

Authors

Stuart P. Wilson

Paul N. Wilson



Contributors

Robert Sutherland
Editor

Abstract

Successful demonstrations of novel short-cut taking by animals, including humans, are open to interpretation in terms of learning that is not necessarily spatial. A classic example is that of Tolman, Ritchie, and Kalish (1946) who allowed rats to repeat a sequence of turns through the corridors of a maze to locate a food reward. When the entrance to the corridors was subsequently blocked and alternative corridors were made available, rats successfully selected the corridor leading most directly to the food location. However, the presence of a distinctive light above the goal, in both the training and testing phases, means that approach to the light as a beacon could have been the source of successful short-cutting. We report a replication of the experimental design of Tolman et al. with human participants who explored geometrically equivalent virtual environments. An experimental group, who followed the original procedure in the absence of any distinctive cues proximal to the goal, did not select the corridor which led most directly to the goal. A control group, who experienced a light above the goal during training and testing, were more likely to select a corridor which led in the direction of the goal. A second control group experienced the light above the goal during training, but in the test the location of this cue was shifted by 90˚ with respect to the start point of exploration. This latter group responded unsystematically in the test, neither selecting a corridor leading to the original goal location, nor one leading directly to the relocated light cue. The results do not support the hypothesis that travelling a multi-path route automatically leads to an integrated cognitive representation of that route. The data offer support for the importance of local cues which can serve as beacons to indicate the location of a goal.

Citation

Wilson, S. P., & Wilson, P. N. (2018). Failure to demonstrate short-cutting in a replication and extension of Tolman et al.’s spatial learning experiment with humans. PLoS ONE, 13(12), e0208794. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0208794

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Dec 19, 2018
Online Publication Date Dec 26, 2018
Publication Date Dec 26, 2018
Deposit Date Feb 11, 2019
Publicly Available Date Mar 29, 2024
Journal PLOS ONE
Print ISSN 1932-6203
Publisher Public Library of Science
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 13
Issue 12
Article Number e0208794
Pages e0208794
DOI https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0208794
Keywords General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology; General Agricultural and Biological Sciences; General Medicine
Public URL https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/1198552
Publisher URL https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0208794

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Copyright Statement
©2018 Wilson, Wilson.This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.





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