Research Article Search in External and Internal Spaces Evidence for Generalized Cognitive Search Processes

ABSTRACT—There is compelling molecular and behavioral evidence that goal-directed cognition is an evolutionary descendant of spatial-foraging behavior. Across animal species, similar dopaminergic processes modulate between exploratory and exploitative foraging behaviors and con-trol attention. Consequently, we hypothesized that spatial-foraging activity could prime attentional cognitive activity. We examined how searching in physical space influences subsequent search in abstract cognitive space by presenting participants with a spatial-foraging task followed by a repeated Scrabble task involving search for words that could be made from letter sets. Participants who searched through clumpier distributions in space behaved as if words were more densely clumped in the Scrabble task. This was not a function of arousal, but was consistent with predic