Landmark-based goal-searching tasks that were similar to those for pigeons (Ushitani & Jitsumori, 2011) were provided to human participants to investigate whether they could learn and use multiple sources of spatial information that redundantly indicate the position of a hidden target in both an open field (Experiment 1) and on a computer screen (Experiments 2 and 3). During the training in each experiment, participants learned to locate a target in 1 of 25 objects arranged in a 5 × 5 grid, using two differently colored, arrow-shaped (Experiments 1 and 2) or asymmetrically shaped (Experiment 3) landmarks placed adjacent to the goal and pointing to the goal location. The absolute location and directions of the landmarks varied across trials, but the constant configuration of the goal and the landmarks enabled participants to find the goal using both global configural information and local vector information (pointing to the goal by each individual landmark). On subsequent test trials, the direction was changed for one of the landmarks to conflict with the global configural information. Results of Experiment 1 indicated that participants used vector information from a single landmark but not configural information. Further examinations revealed that the use of global (metric) information was enhanced remarkably by goal searching with nonarrow-shaped landmarks on the computer monitor (Experiment 3) but much less so with arrow-shaped landmarks (Experiment 2). The General Discussion focuses on a comparison between humans in the current study and pigeons in the previous study. (PsycINFO Database Record
Landmark cues are especially important in spatial cognition, because the processing of landmarks is seen at an early stage of cognitive map formation. Previous studies have indicated that animals are capable of conducting goal searches using multiple landmarks. We reviewed studies on the competition and integration of spatial information regarding multiple landmarks. It was considered that knowledge about the processing of landmarks would lead to an understanding about the competition that occurs among multiple landmarks and about the spatial cognition leading to the development of multiple landmarks in cognitive maps. These issues have been independently investigated in the contexts of cognitive mapping and associative learning. It is concluded that cue competitions among multiple landmarks are acquisition processes and it is proposed that competition for cues precedes the integration process in cognitive map formation.
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