Sutton Jennifer E
Department of Psychology, Brescia University College, 1285 Western Rd, London, ON N6G1H2, Canada.
Behav Processes. 2009 Mar;80(3):339-43. doi: 10.1016/j.beproc.2008.11.007. Epub 2008 Nov 24.
Unlike investigations of animals' use of spatial cues such as landmarks, studies of sensitivity to the geometry of surfaces in an enclosure have proceeded mostly as an attempt to explain a laboratory finding with few direct tests of how animals use such a cue in nature. In this brief review, I discuss the current debate over whether global or local information from the enclosure drives the typical rotational error pattern in such studies. A consideration of the form and function of geometric cues in natural settings suggests that the natural boundaries for which arena walls are considered analogous might better be thought as landmarks. With a clearer picture of what geometric information is and how it might be used in nature, the generality of findings from laboratory studies of geometry enclosure can be better assessed.
与对动物利用地标等空间线索的研究不同，对动物在封闭环境中对表面几何形状的敏感度的研究，大多是为了解释一项实验室发现，而很少直接测试动物在自然环境中如何利用这种线索。在这篇简短的综述中，我讨论了当前关于在这类研究中，来自封闭环境的全局或局部信息是否驱动典型旋转误差模式的争论。对自然环境中几何线索的形式和功能的思考表明，被认为与竞技场墙壁类似的自然边界，可能更应被视为地标。对几何信息是什么以及它在自然中可能如何被使用有了更清晰的认识后，就可以更好地评估来自几何封闭环境实验室研究结果的普遍性。
