Spatial Cognition

Question 1

When ants were tracked on how they could go find food and then back to the nest, what patterns were found?

Answer 1

As they didn’t know how to find food, their path outbound was messier, but once they found their food, they went straight to their nest in a very short distance

Question 2

How could ants recognize where their nest is?

Answer 2

Typically using geometry and path integration- keeping track of the distance of which they move and then use the Pythagorean theorem to cut their way

Question 3

Describe Wehner et al and how they tracked ant’s tracking abilities.

Answer 3

Captured foraging ants 6 meters to remove them from any visual cues from their nest and it was found that they would go straight to their nest, and would circle their nest area after the nest was destroyed

Question 4

How would ants keep track of direction?

Answer 4

Following the sun, even though the sun’s position could change

Question 5

How might an ant keep track of distance?

Answer 5

Counting steps (despite changes in terrain)

Question 6

Describe Wittlinger et al and how they studied ant’s ability to count steps?

Answer 6

either maintained an ant’s legs, amputated their legs, or gave them stilts, released them 10 meters from their nest. Stilt ants went too far, stumped ants didn’t go far enough- assumed that their steps went the same distance

Question 7

Are distance computations exclusive to ants?

Answer 7

No, it could be found in animals such as geese and humans

Question 8

Describe a study that could see if a geese can path integrate?

Answer 8

Covered geese in a cart and then displaced them away from home so they couldn’t see landmarks from their way home. Geese still path integrated and returned through the shortest route

Question 9

What kind of humans could need analogous mechanisms to be able to find their way home? Describe a study

Answer 9

Some hunter-gatherers make long trips into the wilderness and are able to return using more direct routes- are accurate as homing pigeons at identifying home from an unfamiliar location.

Question 10

Path integration is only necessary in an ____ environment.

Answer 10

path integration is necessary only in unfamiliar environment

Question 11

What cues do most people tend to use to find their way back to places like their home?

Answer 11

People tend to use familiar landmarks with known positions in order to track their way back to places like their home

Question 12

A position is known by ____ or _____.

Answer 12

a position is known by firsthand experience (route knowledge), or maps and directions (survey knowledge)

Question 13

Describe a study where relying on mental maps can potentially be inaccurate.

Answer 13

When asking participants to go from Portland Oregon to Toronto, Canada, they would assume that they had to go northeast, because there is a perception that Canada is above the United States (superordinate), where in reality Oregon is southeast of Toronto

Question 14

Discuss how Tversky found that firsthand route knowledge could be egocentric and inaccurate.

Answer 14

Found we represent distances/directions in relation to our goals and thus distorted them- asked Stanford undergraduates for maps- they simplified many angles and assumed they were right angles because they were more so focused on how the routes would take them to certain locations

Question 15

Describe how Chang studied reorientation in the lab

Answer 15

Span rat around and hid food in one corner of a rat’s enclosure, then returned the rats to their original enclosures. They found that out of many other cues, rats only used wall configurations, and half the time they searched the corner diagonal to the one with food because the distance would theoretically be the same between the food

Question 16

Why would rats reorient by geometry?

Answer 16

Geometry is a more stable property of the environment than something like color or scent

Question 17

Describe how Hermer and Spelke tested reorientation in young children and adults.

Answer 17

the enclosure was a white, rectangular room with or without a prominent landmark- red wall
were shown where a sticker was, spun around and told to find sticker. In the room with a red wall, human adults used that landmark to guide their search but children didn’t up until age 7 and went potentially the wrong diagonal direction.

Question 18

What does Spelke speculate the transition from geometry to landmark-based reorientation require? Explain why that could be difficult in children.

Answer 18

Requires language. To use a landmark to reorient, one must be able to verbally encode something like “left or right of the red wall”. Before mastering spatial terms like left and right, children rely on geometry for reorientation

Question 19

In Spelke’s experiment, children’s understanding of what terms correlated with success in red wall conditions?

Answer 19

Children’s production of left and right correlated with success in red wall conditions

Question 20

In Spelke’s experiment, making the adults do what task made them rely on geometry/path integration?

Answer 20

Verbal shadowing (having to repeat a recording) lead to participants going into the wrong corner because they were unable to internally say they were going to the right corner

Question 21

What is the question of Landau et al?

Answer 21

Can human children perform path integration?

Question 22

What is the alternatives of Landau et al?

Answer 22

Yes, path integration is an evolutionarily ancient skill facilitated by innate tacit knowledge of geometry
no, organisms learn to integrate paths via firsthand experience (which children lack)

Question 23

What is the logic of Landau et al?

Answer 23

If children can perform path integration, then they should be able to infer the shortest distance between two points known only in relation to a third point
if children cannot perform path integration , then they should not be able to infer the shortest distance between two points known only in relation to a third point

Question 24

What is the method of Landau et al?

Answer 24

Had a congenitally blind 2.5 year old child, present her three objects positioned in a triangle within a few meters between her and her mother (in relation to her mother)
Was then taken to each object and walked to a different object

Question 25

What is the result of Landau et al?

Answer 25

Moderate success- 8 successes, 4 failures binomial probability for her to have gotten to the locations randomly are very low

Question 26

What is the inference of Landau et al?

Answer 26

Human children can infer the shortest distance between two points even in the absence of visual input children must therefore keep track of the distances and directions of the paths they take Implicit knowledge of Euclidean geometry may be innate