Equidistant Landmarks Fail to Produce the Blocking Effect in Spatial Learning Using a Virtual Water Maze Task with Healthy Adults: A Role for Cognitive Mapping?

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES: Cue competition is a feature of associative learning, whereby during learning, cues compete with each other, based on their relative salience, to influence subsequent performance. Blocking is a feature of cue competition where prior knowledge of a cue (X) will interfere with the subsequent learning of a second cue (XY). When tested with the second cue (Y) alone, participants show an impairment in responding. While blocking has been observed across many domains, including spatial learning, previous research has raised questions regarding replication and the conditions necessary for it to occur. Furthermore, two prominent spatial learning theories predict contrary results for blocking. Associative learning accounts predict that the addition of a cue will lead to a blocking effect and impaired performance upon testing. Whereas the cognitive map theory suggests that the novel cue will be integrated into a map with no subsequent impairment in performance.

METHODS

Using a virtual water maze task, we investigated the blocking effect in human participants.

RESULTS

Results indicated that the cue learned in phase 1 of the experiment did not interfere with learning of a subsequent cue introduced in phase 2.

CONCLUSIONS

This suggests that blocking did not occur and supports a cognitive mapping approach in human spatial learning. However, the relative location of the cues relative to the goal and how this might determine the learning strategy used by participants was discussed.