Individual variation in human navigation

Abstract

The cognitive map view of navigation posits that humans and other species represent space in a format that encodes the distances and directions among locations in relation to external reference frames such as boundaries and landmarks. Such an allocentric representation is combined with egocentric representations that track a navigator's position over movement. Jointly, these systems enable the flexible planning of routes, including shortcuts, detours, and paths between two locations not formerly travelled. Tolman's (1948) work on the sunburst maze initiated this tradition. In the sunburst maze, rats who had followed a circuitous route to find a reward, as shown at the left of Figure 1, could take a shortcut to the goal when their route was blocked and other routes were offered, as shown at the right of Figure 1. That is, to use one set of terms, they were place learners as well as response learners, or to use another set of terms, they formed survey representations as well as route representations.