Research Article Reorienting When Cues Conflict Evidence for an Adaptive-Combination View

ABSTRACT—Proponents of a geometric module claim that human adults accomplish spatial reorientation in a fun-damentally different way than young children and non-human animals do. However, reporting two experiments that used a conflict paradigm, this article shows striking similarities between human adults and young children, as well as nonhuman animals. Specifically, Experiment 1 demonstrates that adults favor geometric information in a small room and rely on features in a larger room, whereas Experiment 2 demonstrates that experience in a larger room produces dominance of features over geometric cues in a small room—the first human case of reliance on fea-tures that contradict geometric information. Thus, use of features during reorientation depends on the size of the environment and learning history. These results clearl