The effects of overtraining in the Morris water maze on allocentric and egocentric learning strategies in rats.
Animals can use both allocentric and egocentric strategies to learn a spatial task. Our results suggest that allocentric cues are more dominant than idiothetic cues in guiding navigation. Animals do not necessarily learn an egocentric strategy automatically, instead they probably hold just one solution to any particular task at a time until forced to learn an alternative strategy. Further, with overtraining animals do not always switch from allocentric to an egocentric learning strategy perhaps challenging suggestions of a stored hierarchy of strategies.
Department of Psychology, National University of Ireland, Maynooth, Co. Kildare, Ireland.
John
J
Kealy
Mairead
M
Diviney
Elizabeth
E
Kehoe
Vanessa
V
McGonagle
Adrienne
A
O'Shea
Deirdre
D
Harvey
Sean
S
Commins
D000818:Animals; D001522:Behavior, Animal / Q000502:physiology; D003463:Cues; D004924:Escape Reaction / Q000502:physiology; D008297:Male; D018782:Maze Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology; D009949:Orientation / Q000502:physiology*; D051381:Rats; D017208:Rats, Wistar; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D013037:Spatial Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology