Handbook of Psychology, Volume 4: Experimental Psychology

Cognitive Processes 413

Figure 14.4 An apparatus employed by Tolman, Ritchie, and Kalish

(1946). In preliminary training, rats were reinforced for running along the

path A-B-C-D-E-F-G to H.

F

E

D

C

B

A

G

H

Figure 14.5 The apparatus employed in the test phase of the Tolman et al.

(1946) experiment. The most frequently selected path was Path 6 (see Fig-

ure 14.6), indicating that the rats learned to go to a place rather than learn a

specific response.

A

18

17

16

15

14

13

12

(^111098)
7 6 5 4 3 2 1
BLOCK H
provides a somewhat different definition of a cognitive map,
in that it is evidenced by any orientation based upon comput-
ing distance. Others suggest that the concept of a cognitive
map is not necessary to explain spatial learning. According to
this view, animals acquire a set of memories of local views
of the environment associated with the particular movements
that take them from one place to another (e.g., Leonard &
McNaughton, 1990).
As much as any topic, the ability of animals to go from one
place to another brings together the topics of instinct and cog-
nition. Consider the indigo bunting, a bird studied by Emlen
(1970). The bird migrates over great distances. Yet, although
migration is a species-typical behavior, specific migratory
routes are learned by the bird by its exposure to the star pattern
in the sky. In what follows it is possible to describe only a few
examples of the many procedures that have been used to study
map like learning in various species of animals.
In going from one place to another, do animals learn to
make specific responses or do they acquire more general, cog-
nitively informed spatial information? An early and hotly con-
tested attempt to resolve this issue involved what came to be
known as theplace versus response controversy. This may be
illustrated by considering the two cross mazes shown in Fig-
ure 14.3. Two groups of rats might be used, both being trained
to traverse the maze from each of two different start locations,
S 1 and S 2. The difference is this: The group on the left is
rewarded for making a specific response (turning left), going
from S 1 to G 1 and from S 2 to G 2 ; the group on the right is
rewarded for going to a specific place, from S 1 to G 1 and from
S 2 to G 1. Thus the response group is rewarded for going to
two different places whereas the place group is rewarded for
making two different responses, left (S 1 –G 1 ) and right
(S 2 –G 1 ). As a review (Restle, 1957) of the extensive literature
in this area indicated, rats learn to do both. If trained in a vi-
sually rich, well-illuminated environment, the place group is
superior to the response group. In an impoverished, dimly
illuminated environment the response group is superior to the
place group.
Another of the various procedures employed to determine
whether rats learn specific responses or more general spatial
information involved the maze shown in Figure 14.4. Path
AB was the starting path. The rats ran along the paths B-C-D-
E-F-G. H was a dim light. Figure 14.5 shows how the rats
were tested. Path AD was blocked. Path 5 led to the original
goal and the dim light, H. If the animals were learning a spe-
cific response, then presumably they would begin by going
left, selecting paths 10 to 18. If they were learning to go to a
Figure 14.3 In the cross maze on the left, arrows indicate that animals
starting at S 1 are reinforced for going to G 1 and animals starting at S 2 are re-
inforced for going to G 2 , thus learning a left-turn response. In the cross maze
on the right, animals starting at either S 1 or S 2 are reinforced for going to G 1
and thus learn to go to a place (a place response).
S 1
G 1 G 2
S 2
S 1
G 1 G 2
S 2