Abstract
Rats collected nuts from a container in a large arena in four experiments testing how learning about a beacon or cue at a goal interacts with learning about other spatial cues (place learning). Place learning was quick, with little evidence of competition from the beacon (Experiments 1 and 2). Rats trained to approach a beacon regardless of its location were subsequently impaired when the well-learned beacon was removed and other spatial cues identified the location of the goal (Experiment 3). The competition between beacon and place cues reflected learned irrelevance for place cues (Experiment 4). The findings differ from those of some studies of associative interactions between cue and place learning in other paradigms.
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Some of the results of Experiments 1 and 2 were reported at the Conference on Comparative Cognition, Melbourne, FL, March 2001, and at the Gregynog Conference on Associative Learning, Gregynog, Wales, April 2001. This research was supported by a research grant to the second author from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. We thank Andrew Gristock and Loull Silver for animal care, Jennifer Barker, Amy Dalton, Lori Grappone, Ben David Jee, Noam Miller, and Loull Silver for testing the animals, and Noam Miller for indispensible help with data analysis.
—Accepted by previous editorial team of Ralph R. Miller
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Gibson, B.M., Shettleworth, S.J. Competition among spatial cues in a naturalistic food-carrying task. Animal Learning & Behavior 31, 143–159 (2003). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03195977
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03195977