Honzik experiments discussed above.

Honzik experiments discussed above. The rats in those experiments (as
interpreted by the experimenters) are comparing three paths to a given
goal with which they are already familiar. The rats register that there are
different, though interconnected, paths to a single goal and make calculations
about their relative efficiency, but this falls short of perspectival sensitivity
in Peacocke’s sense. What distinguishes the behavior of the dogs
is that they are using information about routes with which they are familiar
to devise a shortcut between two points in a way that depends on
sensitivity to their changing spatial position.
Another good example of behavior for which the demands of inference
to the best explanation seem to require the attribution of perspectival
sensitivity (behavior displaying perhaps an even greater spatial mastery)
is the performance of a young chimpanzee in the so-called travelingsalesman
combinatorial problem (Menzel 1973). The chimpanzee was
carried by an experimenter who hid food at 18 different locations, so the
chimpanzee was able to see every location and the routes between them.
When left to its own devices, the chimpanzee recovered almost all of the
food, employing an optimal path considerably more economical in terms
both of distance and of preference (when the foods were of different values).
The chimp is able to construct an optimal recovery route only
because it can track spatial relations in a way that is sensitive to its changing
position.
Perspectival sensitivity can clearly be demonstrated in young infants,
as is shown by a experimental paradigm employed by Acredolo, Adams,
and Goodwyn (1984). The paradigm comprises two containers surrounded
on three sides by transparent screens (figure 8.4). From the position
marked A in the diagram the experimental infants were shown an
object hidden in one of the two containers. Because of the glass walls,
however, they could reach it only by crawling around to the gap in the
wall on the opposite side of the apparatus (point B). The location of the
object relative to the infant is, of course, inverted as he moves around
from point A to point B (the container that was formerly on the infant’s
right is now on his left, and vice versa). The infants’ successes reported
by Acredolo, Adams, and Goodwyn clearly indicates sensitivity on the
part of the experimental infants to the spatial implications of their changing
position.
Let me turn now to the third component in possessing an integrated
representation of one’s environment. As I have already mentioned several
times, the representation of space involves the capacity to represent two
different classes of spatial relations: the relatively unchanging spatial relations
that hold between places and the far more dynamic relations that
hold between things, which change positions. The constraint of perspectival
sensitivity provides one condition on a proper grasp of how these two
different types of spatial relations interact, a condition that follows from
the fact that the perceiving subject is himself a moving thing. But this is a
further condition that needs to be extracted here. If a creature is to be
able to harmonize these two types of spatial relations, it must be able to
grasp at some level that there are two different types of spatial relations,
and this in turn seems to demand a grasp that places are distinct from the
things found at those places. This holds even when ‘thing’ is understood
weakly, so that features count as “things.” A creature that can think about
a particular spatial location only in terms of an object* or feature existing
at that location has not grasped the nature of space in the way required
to possess an integrated representation of its environment over time (any
A
B
218 Chapter 8
Perspectival sensitivity in infancy. The infant sees an object hidden in one of the
containers but is prevented from reaching the object by transparent glass screens.
To obtain the object, the infant must crawl around the array to B. (From Acredolo,
Adams, and Goodwyn 1984.)
more than a creature who can think about a particular object only in
terms of a single spatial location). There is a crucial requirement here,
namely that a creature should be able to recognize that places persist
through changes in the objects* or features located at those places. This
in turn seems to require the capacity to recognize and reidentify places
independently of objects or features located at those places.
Another set of experiments carried out on rats in mazes by Tolman
provide a good illustration of how this capacity might be practically manifested.
These experiments are the so-called “latent learning” experiments
(Tolman and Honzik 1930b). Two different groups of rats were run
through a maze for several days. One group were provided with rewards
at the end of the maze, while the second group went unrewarded. As one
might expect, the rats that found food at the end of the maze quickly
learned to run the maze, while the unrewarded rats just seemed to wander
aimlessly about, turning into as many blind alleys at the end of the test
period as they had at the beginning. Much more striking, though, was
what happened when a food reward was put into the maze of a rat that
had hitherto been unrewarded. The rats who previously appeared not to
have learned the correct sequence choices required to run the maze were
almost immediately able to run the maze more or less perfectly once they
encountered the food reward. Placed back at the beginning of the maze
the day after finding the reward, they took the most direct path to the end
of the maze, rather than repeat the (apparently random) movements that
had originally taken them there.
The most obvious way of interpreting these results (and certainly the
way they were interpreted by Tolman and Honzik) is to hold that the rats
were already familiar with the quickest way through the maze by the time
the food reward was introduced but simply had no reason to put their
“latent learning” into practice before encountering the food reward.
What is interesting for present purposes is how latent learning illustrates
the representation of space. Latent learning depends upon the rats registering
that the place where they encounter the food is the same as the
place that they had previously visited without encountering any food. If
the rats could only think about a particular place in terms of a particular
object or feature that they find there, then latent learning would be impossible.
The behavior revealed in the latent-learning experiments is a good