Exploration patterns shape cognitive map learning.

Spontaneous, volitional spatial exploration is crucial for building up a cognitive map of the environment. However, decades of research have primarily measured the fidelity of cognitive maps after discrete, controlled learning episodes. We know little about how cognitive maps are formed during naturalistic free exploration. Here, we investigated whether exploration trajectories predicted cognitive map accuracy, and how these patterns were shaped by environmental structure. In two experiments, participants freely explored a previously unfamiliar virtual environment. We related their exploration trajectories to a measure of how long they spent in areas with high global environmental connectivity (integration, as assessed by space syntax). In both experiments, we found that participants who spent more time on paths that offered opportunities for integration formed more accurate cognitive maps. Interestingly, we found no support for our pre-registered hypothesis that self-reported trait differences in navigation ability would mediate this relationship. Our findings suggest that exploration patterns predict cognitive map accuracy, even for people who self-report low ability, and highlight the importance of considering both environmental structure and individual variability in formal theory- and model-building.

Individual differences in the allocation of visual attention during navigation.

Individual differences exist in the ability to create an accurate mental survey representation (i.e., a cognitive map) of a novel environment, yet the mechanisms underlying differences in cognitive map accuracy are still under investigation. To determine whether differences in overt attention allocation contribute to these individual differences, the current study examined whether looking times to landmarks and other objects while navigating in a dynamic virtual environment were related to cognitive map accuracy. Participants completed a battery of spatial tests; some tests assessed spatial skills prior to the navigation task (the Santa Barbara Sense of Direction Scale and the Spatial Orientation Test), and others tested memory of the virtual environment Silcton after an exploration period (a landmark recognition task, a direction estimation task, a map-building task, and a route construction task). Individuals with inaccurate cognitive maps of Silcton, as measured by the direction estimation and map-building tasks, showed equivalent eye fixations to buildings and objects when exploring Silcton as those with accurate maps. Despite similar looking times, the inaccurate mappers were significantly worse at judgments of relative direction between landmarks in Silcton and showed poorer memory for landmarks in Silcton than accurate mappers. These findings suggest that cognitive mechanisms, such as mental perspective-taking, occurring after attention allocation underlie differences in cognitive map accuracy. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Individual differences in cognitive map accuracy: Investigating the role of landmark familiarity.

Broad individual differences exist in the ability to create a cognitive map of a new environment. The current studies investigated whether familiarizing participants with to-be-learned target landmarks (Experiment 1) or target landmarks plus the order they would be encountered along routes (Experiment 2) before exploring the Silcton virtual environment would increase performance on tasks assaying spatial memory of Silcton. Participants in both experiments were randomly assigned to be pre-exposed either to information about target landmarks in Silcton or control landmarks on the university campus. In both experiments, participants explored Silcton via four prescribed routes and then performed a direction estimation task and a map building task based on memory for the locations of the target landmarks. In addition, participants completed the Spatial Orientation Test of perspective-taking. Pre-exposure to Silcton landmarks versus control landmarks did not affect scores on Silcton-based tasks in either experiment. Some sex differences in direction estimation were observed in Experiment 1 but not Experiment 2. While facilitating familiarity with landmarks did not improve cognitive map accuracy, both sex and perspective taking ability were found to contribute to individual differences in the ability to create a cognitive map. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Memory without awareness: pigeons do not show metamemory in delayed matching to sample.

Metamemory, the ability to report on memory strength, is clearly established in rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) by converging evidence from several paradigms. In contrast, A. Inman and S. J. Shettleworth (1999) found no conclusive evidence of metamemory in pigeons. The authors studied pigeons further in 3 paradigms, with multiple tests of metamemory in each. Pigeons encountered a safe alternative to a matching-to-sample test either before (Experiment 2) or concurrently with (Experiment 3) the matching test. Choices of the safe option did not vary consistently with matching accuracy or change in trials with omitted samples in the way predicted for an animal with metamemory. In Experiment 4, confidence ratings following completion of the matching test also did not vary consistently as predicted by metamemory.

Multiple systems for spatial learning: dead reckoning and beacon homing in rats.

Rats homed with food in a large lighted arena. Without visual cues, they used dead reckoning. When a beacon indicated the home, rats could also use the beacon. Homing did not differ in 2 groups of rats, 1 provided with the beacon and 1 without it; tests without the beacon gave no evidence that beacon learning overshadowed dead reckoning (Experiment 1). When the beacon was at the home for 1 group and in random locations for another, there was again no evidence of cue competition (Experiment 2). Dead reckoning experience did not block acquisition of beacon homing (Experiment 3). Beacon learning and dead reckoning do not compete for predictive value but acquire information in parallel and are used hierarchically.

Internal sense of direction and landmark use in pigeons (Columba livia).

The relative importance of an internal sense of direction based on inertial cues and landmark piloting for small-scale navigation by White King pigeons (Columba livia) was investigated in an arena search task. Two groups of pigeons differed in whether they had access to visual cues outside the arena. In Experiment 1, pigeons were given experience with 2 different entrances and all pigeons transferred accurate searching to novel entrances. Explicit disorientation before entering did not affect accuracy. In Experiments 2-4, landmarks and inertial cues were put in conflict or tested 1 at a time. Pigeons tended to follow the landmarks in a conflict situation but could use an internal sense of direction to search when landmarks were unavailable.

Multiple-landmark piloting in pigeons (Columba livia): landmark configuration as a discriminative cue.

Using the landmark-transformation technique, researchers have shown that pigeons (Columba livia) tend to encode a goal location relative to 1 landmark, even when multiple landmarks are in the vicinity of the goal. The current experiments examined pigeons' ability to use configural information from a set of landmarks by making the arrangement of 4 landmarks a discriminative cue to the location of buried seeds. Results showed that pigeons used information from the 3 consistently placed landmarks to search accurately when 1 landmark was displaced. Findings indicate that pigeons are able to search for a goal using information from multiple landmarks instead of just 1 and that landmark use by these birds may be more flexible than previously theorized.

Failure to find evidence of stimulus generalization within pictorial categories in pigeons.

Pigeons' key pecks were reinforced in the presence of pictures from one of two categories, cats or cars. A single picture associated with reinforcement was used in Experiment 1, and 20 pictures from the same category were associated with reinforcement in Experiment 2. Pigeons then were presented with novel test pictures from the training category and from the other, previously unseen, category. During Session 1 of testing, pigeons pecked no more often at pictures from the reinforced category than at pictures from the previously unseen category. When pigeons were trained with pictures associated with reinforcement or its absence from different categories in Experiment 3, differential responding to novel pictures from different categories appeared during Session 1. These findings argue against a process of automatic stimulus generalization within natural categories and in favor of the position that category distinctions are not made until members of at least two categories are compared with one another.

Animal metacognition? It's all in the methods.

When animals choose between completing a cognitive task and "escaping," proper interpretation of their behavior depends crucially on methodological details, including how forced and freely chosen tests are mixed and whether appropriate transfer tests are administered. But no matter how rigorous the test, it is impossible to go beyond functional similarity between human and nonhuman behaviors to certainty about human-like consciousness.

The hippocampus is not a geometric module: processing environment geometry during reorientation.

The hippocampus has long been known to play a role in allocentric spatial coding, but its specific involvement in reorientation, or the recalibration of a disrupted egocentric spatial representation using allocentric spatial information, has received less attention. Initially, the cognitive literature on reorientation focused on a "geometric module" sensitive to the shape formed by extended surfaces in the environment, and the neuroscience literature followed with proposals that particular MTL regions might be the seat of such a module. However, with behavioral evidence mounting that a modular cognitive architecture is unlikely, recent work has begun to directly address the issue of the neural underpinnings of reorientation. In this review, we describe the reorientation paradigm, initial proposals for the role of the MTL when people reorient, our recent work on the neural bases of reorientation, and finally, how this new information regarding neural mechanism helps to re-interpret and clarify the original behavioral reorientation data.

Navigation experience and mental representations of the environment: do pilots build better cognitive maps?

A number of careers involve tasks that place demands on spatial cognition, but it is still unclear how and whether skills acquired in such applied experiences transfer to other spatial tasks. The current study investigated the association between pilot training and the ability to form a mental survey representation, or cognitive map, of a novel, ground-based, virtual environment. Undergraduate students who were engaged in general aviation pilot training and controls matched to the pilots on gender and video game usage freely explored a virtual town. Subsequently, participants performed a direction estimation task that tested the accuracy of their cognitive map representation of the town. In addition, participants completed the Object Perspective Test and rated their spatial abilities. Pilots were significantly more accurate than controls at estimating directions but did not differ from controls on the Object Perspective Test. Locations in the town were visited at a similar rate by the two groups, indicating that controls' relatively lower accuracy was not due to failure to fully explore the town. Pilots' superior performance is likely due to better online cognitive processing during exploration, suggesting the spatial updating they engage in during flight transfers to a non-aviation context.

Hangar talk survey: using stories as a naturalistic method of informing threat and error management training.

OBJECTIVE: The current study developed an online hangar talk survey (HTS) to solicit narratives describing challenging scenarios that professional pilots encountered during the hours-building phase of their career. BACKGROUND: The predicted pilot shortage will effectively reduce the minimum flying hours required for pilots to be hired at an airline, resulting in less opportunity to develop nontechnical skills naturalistically. To compensate, threat and error data from the hours-building phase of a pilot's career are required to inform training development. Pilots often share stories of such experiences, colloquially termed "hangar talk". METHOD: The HTS gathered 132 narrative descriptions of general aviation (GA) events from pilots along with the event's impact and whether the pilots would react differently if the scenario were encountered again. RESULTS: The distribution of threats reported by GA pilots was similar to that reported at the airline level. Logistic regression analysis revealed that decision-making errors were associated with recognition of the need to react differently in the future, and decision-making errors and proficiency errors were associated with greater perceived impact on skill development. CONCLUSION: The current HTS solicited an array of data similar to the findings of airline-based threat and error observations. Pilots perceive decision-making and proficiency errors as impactful on skill development. APPLICATION: An HTS can be used to gather naturalistic threat and error data and to create a database of operational stories that can be used to develop nontechnical training based on narrative thought.

Geometry three ways: an fMRI investigation of geometric information processing during reorientation.

The geometry formed by the walls of a room is known to be a potent cue in reorientation, yet little is known about the use of geometric information gleaned from other contexts. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine neural activity in adults while reorienting in 3 different environments: the typical rectangular walled room, a rectangular configuration of pillars in an open field, and a rectangular floor in an open field. Behavioral response patterns for the 3 environments were similar, but pairwise contrasts of brain activation revealed differences at the neural level. We observed greater medial temporal lobe (MTL) involvement when reorienting with the pillars versus the walls and floor. In addition, the walled room selectively engaged areas of posterior parahippocampal cortex corresponding to the parahippocampal place area, when compared with the floor. Finally, a conjunction analysis of the 3 geometry conditions, compared with a control task, revealed activation in the primary auditory cortex that was common to all geometry conditions. These findings add to growing evidence that adults use verbal processes to encode environment geometry and that the reorientation tasks that young children find difficult are particularly hippocampus-dependent.

Very late stent thrombosis approximately 7 years after deployment and one-week cessation of dual antiplatelet therapy.

This work describes the longest reported interval between drug-eluting stent (DES) placement and very late stent thrombosis (VLST). A 69-year-old male presented with substernal chest pain associated with ST-segment myocardial infarction (STEMI) after having a DES deployed 6.9 years (2506 days) prior. The patient's medical history revealed several risk factors for VLST. The patient suspended clopidogrel therapy in preparation for elective cystoscopy approximately 10 days before presenting.

Spinning in the scanner: neural correlates of virtual reorientation.

Recent studies have used spatial reorientation task paradigms to identify underlying cognitive mechanisms of navigation in children, adults, and a range of animal species. Despite broad interest in this task across disciplines, little is known about the brain bases of reorientation. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine neural activity in adults during a virtual reality version of the reorientation task. Three environments that varied in the cues provided were studied: a rectangular room with 4 identical gray walls (Geometry), a square room with 3 gray walls and 1 red wall (Feature), and a rectangular room with 3 gray walls and 1 red wall (Feature + Geometry). Multiple areas within the medial temporal lobe (MTL) showed increased activation when a feature was present compared with when reorientation was based only on geometric cues. In contrast, reliance on geometric cues significantly activated a number of non-MTL structures, including the prefrontal cortex and inferior temporal gyrus. These results provide neural evidence for processing differences between the 2 types of cue as well as insight into developmental and comparative aspects of reorientation.

What is geometric information and how do animals use it?

Unlike investigations of animals' use of spatial cues such as landmarks, studies of sensitivity to the geometry of surfaces in an enclosure have proceeded mostly as an attempt to explain a laboratory finding with few direct tests of how animals use such a cue in nature. In this brief review, I discuss the current debate over whether global or local information from the enclosure drives the typical rotational error pattern in such studies. A consideration of the form and function of geometric cues in natural settings suggests that the natural boundaries for which arena walls are considered analogous might better be thought as landmarks. With a clearer picture of what geometric information is and how it might be used in nature, the generality of findings from laboratory studies of geometry enclosure can be better assessed.

The development of landmark and beacon use in young children: evidence from a touchscreen search task.

Children ages 2, 3 and 4 years participated in a novel hide-and-seek search task presented on a touchscreen monitor. On beacon trials, the target hiding place could be located using a beacon cue, but on landmark trials, searching required the use of a nearby landmark cue. In Experiment 1, 2-year-olds performed less accurately than older children on landmark trials but performed equivalently on beacon trials. In Experiment 2, the number of items on the screen was reduced and 2-year-olds' performance improved. Use of the landmark transformation technique in Experiment 3 revealed that older children formed a more precise landmark-target spatial relationship than 2-year-olds. Experiment 4 showed that the transformation itself was not responsible for the youngest participants' decreased accuracy in Experiment 3. Overall, beacons were utilized effectively by all participants, but the use of landmark cues is refined between the ages of 2 and 4.