Memory Properties of Spatial Behaviours in Cats and Hamsters

Abstract

Recent theories about how animals and men use space have dealt with various mechanisms likely to underlie spatial behaviours (Shemyakin, 1962 Hulse, Fowler and Honig, 1978; O’Keefe and Nadel, 1978; Morris, 1981). Development of the theory according to which animals may use several different orientation mechanisms was the result of a controversy which lasted for forty years (cf. Thinus-Blanc, 1985). On the one side, investigators considered the organism as being merely reactive to specific stimuli guiding the subjects’ responses (Hull, 1952). Another view was that animals built a cognitive representation of the environment, allowing them to generate place hypotheses about that environment, regardless of their own locations (Tolman, 1948). Recently, O’Keefe and Nadel (1978) have developed a theory according to which animals may use two types of mechanisms, i.e., “routes” and “maps”. Routes belong to a “taxon system”, which is thought to be governed by the laws of associative learning and to consist of producing cue-dependent egocentric responses, “guidances” and “orientations”. Maps (“locale system”) are thought to be cognitive representations of the environment which do not rely on any particular places or cues.