title: Blocking in the spatial domain.
abstract: An initial series of experiments with rats in a swimming pool established that they could find a hidden platform the location of which was defined in terms of 3 or 4 landmarks and that, when trained with all 4, any subset of 3 (or even, after a sufficient number of swimming trials, 2) landmarks was sufficient to produce accurate performance. When only one landmark was present during testing, however, performance fell to chance. Two additional experiments demonstrated a significant blocking effect: If rats were first trained to locate the platform with 3 landmarks, they did not learn to use a 4th landmark added to their initial set of 3.
authors.affiliation: Departament de Psicologia Bàsica, Universitat de Barcelona, Spain.
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Rodrigo
authors.forename: V D
authors.initials: VD
authors.lastname: Chamizo
authors.forename: I P
authors.initials: IP
authors.lastname: McLaren
authors.forename: N J
authors.initials: NJ
authors.lastname: Mackintosh
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001522:Behavior, Animal / Q000502:physiology*; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D007858:Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D051381:Rats