Spatial Learning: Conditions and Basic Effects

A growing body of evidence suggests that the spatial and the temporal
 domains seem to share the same or similar conditions, basic effects, and
 mechanisms. The blocking, unblocking and overshadowing experiments (and
 also those of latent inhibition and perceptual learning reviewed by Prados
 and Redhead in this issue) show that to exclude associative learning as a
 basic mechanism responsible for spatial learning is quite inappropriate. All
 these results, especially those obtained with strictly spatial tasks, seem
 inconsistent with OKeefe and Nadels account of true spatial learning or
 locale learning. Their theory claims that this kind of learning is
 fundamentally different and develops with total independence from other
 ways of learning (like classical and instrumental conditioning -taxon
 learning). In fact, the results reviewed can be explained appealing on to a
 sophisticated guidance system, like for example the one proposed by Leonard
 and McNaughton (1990; see also McNaughton and cols, 1996). Such a
 system would allow that an animal generates new space information: given
 the distance and address from of A to B and from A to C, being able to infer
 the distance and the address from B to C, even when C is invisible from B
 (see Chapuis and Varlet, 1987 -the contribution by McLaren in this issue
 constitutes a good example of a sophisticated guidance system)