Analysis of movement kinematics on analogous spatial learning tasks demonstrates conservation of direction and distance estimation across humans (Homo sapiens) and rats (Rattus norvegicus).

Abstract

This series of experiments evaluates the nature of the representation that mediates human (Homo sapiens) and rat (Rattus norvegicus) movement characteristics on analogous spatial learning tasks. The results of Experiment 1 demonstrated that self-movement cues were sufficient to guide the performance of human participants during place training and matching-to-place testing tasks adapted to tabletop or manipulatory scale. Experiment 2 investigated the effect of manipulating access to environmental cues during place training on the nature of the representation used to guide performance. Blindfolded human participants appeared to encode the absolute location of the goal, whereas participants with access to environmental cues appeared to encode the relative location of the goal. The results of Experiment 3 demonstrated that human participants with access to environmental cues exhibited a similar response tendency (as observed in Experiment 2) after half as many trials of place training. During Experiment 4, rats exhibited movement characteristics in the water maze that were similar to movement characteristics observed in human participants who were provided access to environmental cues. These observations provide evidence that direction and distance estimation processes mediate performance on spatial tasks that are conserved across humans and rats.