Dual Task Testing of the Adaptive Combination View in Spatial Reorientation

If an organism is trained to approach a location within an enclosure the organism will approach the correct location and it’s geometrically identical location within the environment upon removal of any features. This phenomenon has been turned spatial reorientation, and further studies on how, and to what, organisms reorient have conducted in the last several decades. In the reorientation literature, two theories have surfaced to fill the void left by the rejection of the initial reorientation theory, the Geometric Module theory. I attempt look to discern if the synonym judgement dual task will hinder reorientation in a similar or different fashion than the standard shadowing tasks used. Participants were assigned to a control or dual task condition, in which both groups performed a reorientation task. While performing the reorientation task, the dual task condition was presented with a series of word pairs in which they indicated if the pair of words were synonymous or not. The test indicates Language as a Bridge theory and The Adaptive Combination View may operate via different mechanisms under Baddley’s Working Memory Model. I surmise that the Adaptive Combination View utilizes attentional resources of the phonological loop and visuospatial sketchpad while the Language as a Bridge theory utilizes conscious processing in the episodic buffer and central executive

Dissociating Principal and Medial Axis Predictions: Effects of Training Enclosure Size

Incidental-learning procedures are often used to determine the stimuli that control spatial reorientation in diverse species. A common procedure is to train subjects to approach a discrete landmark prior to testing in the absence of the landmark. Global geometric cues, such as the medial axis of space and the principal axis of space, have both been suggested to account for spatial reorientation in variety of animals (e.g., rats, pigeons and humans). Additionally, the control of spatial reorientation by the global geometric cues has been suggested to vary based upon the size of the enclosure—with smaller enclosures producing greater control by global geometry. In the present study, we trained human participants to approach rotationally-equivalent corners (i.e., north-east and south-west) of a rectangular enclosure in a desktop virtual environment. We manipulated the size of the training enclosure between groups. Following training, all participants were tested in an I-shaped enclosure which dissociated predictions made by medial-axis and principal-axes accounts. Results provide evidence of orientation by principal axis that is dependent on training enclosure size—supporting principal axis accounts of spatial reorientation across species

Exploring the Relationship Between Training and Testing Enclosure Size on the Use of Global and Local Geometric Cues During Spatial Reorientation

Evidence suggests that enclosure size influences the relative use of local but not global geometric cues during spatial reorientation (Sturz, Forloines, and Bodily, 2012). Yet, it remains unclear whether training size, testing size, or the relationship between training size and testing size is responsible for the relative use of local geometric cues. We examined the extent to which manipulations of enclosure size during training (while keeping testing size constant) or at testing (while keeping training size constant) influenced the relative reliance on corner angles (a local geometric cue) during reorientation. Such a design also allowed us to investigate the potential influence of the relationship between training and testing size (i.e., increase in size from training to testing or decrease in size from training to testing). We trained participants to respond to a unique goal location in differently sized trapezoidal enclosures; we then tested participants in a rectangular enclosure to isolate the use of a global geometric cue and a parallelogram to place local and global geometric cues in conflict. Results suggest that the relationship between training and testing size influenced the relative use of local but not global geometric cues for spatial reorientation