Strategies in landmark use by orangutans and human children |
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Authors: | Heidi L Marsh Marcia L Spetch Suzanne E MacDonald |
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Institution: | (1) Department of Psychology, York University, 297 Behavioural Science Building, Toronto, ON, M3J 1P3, Canada;(2) Department of Psychology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, T6G 2E9, Canada; |
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Abstract: | Landmark use has been demonstrated in a variety of organisms, yet the manner in which landmarks are encoded and subsequently
used appears to vary between and sometimes within species, even when faced with identical landmark arrays. In the present
experiments, orangutans and human children were shown a square array of identical landmarks and were trained to locate a hidden
goal in the centre of the array. In Experiments 1 and 2, the search space appeared to be discrete, with white gridlines dividing
up the space, and in Experiments 3a and 3b, the search space was uniformly coloured, making it appear continuous. In all experiments,
following training, subjects were given a single expansion test, to determine their landmark strategy use, based on peak search
activity. The orangutans appeared to use absolute directional vectors from individual landmarks, with peak search activities
on the inner corners of the square array, and they used this strategy persistently. In contrast, human children showed two
landmark-based strategies, absolute directional vectors and a relational or “middle” strategy, with the majority of children
starting their search in the middle region. Although some children, especially young children, persistently used one strategy
like the orangutans, many changed strategies when the original one failed to yield the hidden goal. |
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