Understanding the role of distance, direction and cue salience in an associative model of landmark learning.

ABSTRACT: Navigation and spatial memory relies on the ability to use and recall environmental landmarks relative to important locations. Such learning is thought to result from the strengthening of associations between the goal location and environmental cues. Factors that contribute to the strength of this association include cue stability, saliency and cue location. Here we combine an autoregressive random walk model, that describes goal-directed swimming behaviour, with an associative learning model to provide an integrated model of landmark learning, using the water maze task. The model allows for the contribution of each cue, the salience and the vector information provided (both distance and directional) to be separately analysed. The model suggests that direction and distance information are

SUBMITTER: Commins S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6376129 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature