Abstract
Rats found food in a rectangular enclosure in three experiments testing how learning about a distinctive feature near a goal interacts with learning based on the geometry of an enclosure. Rats trained to follow a feature in square and triangular enclosures and to use geometry in the rectangle followed the feature when it was in the rectangle (Experiment 1). Rats trained with the feature in a geometrically consistent corner of the rectangle learned about both geometry and the feature (Experiment 2). Training with the feature in the square did not block learning of geometry when both predicted the location of food in the rectangle (Experiment 3). The “geometric module” (Cheng, 1986) may have a special status in spatial learning.
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This research was supported by a Research Grant to S.J.S. from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). Parts of Experiments 1 and 2 were conducted with the support of an Undergraduate Summer Research Award from NSERC to the first author. The second and third authors contributed equally to Experiment 3. We thank Amanda McCleery for assistance with testing animals, Andy Gristock for animal care, Brett Gibson for help with statistics, and Ken Cheng and Jennifer Sutton for comments on the manuscript. P. L. Wall is now at the University of Western Ontario.
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Wall, P.L., Botly, L.C.P., Black, C.K. et al. The geometric module in the rat: independence of shape and feature learning in a food finding task. Animal Learning & Behavior 32, 289–298 (2004). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03196028
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03196028