Cognitive Psychology Commons^™

The Effects Of Size And Principal Axis Difference Ratio On The Use Of Featural And Geometric Cues, Spencer J. Price

Honors College Theses

Enclosure size has been shown to affect an animal’s reliance on featural and geometric cues when reorienting in space. Previous research has shown that humans and animals rely primarily on geometric cues in smaller enclosures, and on featural cues in larger enclosures. The multiple-bearings hypothesis predicts that directional information is more discriminable than distance information when landmarks are father away from a goal. As the size of the environment increased, the distance information was less discernible than featural information. In the current study, we tested to see if the reliance on geometry changes across enclosure size. Three different Principal Axis …