Contributions of Redundant Sets of Information to Spatial Searching Behavior: Comparative Cognition of Navigation

2018 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 16K00203
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Cognitive science
• Research Institution: Chiba University
• Principal Investigator: USHITANI Tomokazu 千葉大学, 大学院人文科学研究院, 准教授 (20400806)
• Research Collaborator: SAWA Kosuke ; SEKIGUCHI Katsuo ; FUJII Kazuki ; HIRAI Keita ; MANABE Yoshitsugu ; YATA Noriko ; WATANABE Arii
• Project Period (FY): 2016-04-01 – 2019-03-31
• Keywords: 比較認知 / 種間比較 / 空間認知 / ナビゲーション / 冗長性 / 学習 / ハト / ヒト

Outline of Final Research Achievements

The purpose of the current research project has been to compare learning strategies of navigational cues between humans and pigeons to understand the underlying mechanisms of the well-known high performance of homing by pigeons. In the main experiment, we trained humans and pigeons to find a goal defined by redundant sets of spatial information (local vector cues and configuration of landmarks) and then tested them under a condition in which the landmarks were rearranged as if different goals were indicated by each cue. The results suggested that whereas humans tended to use local vector cues only, pigeons also attended to configural information in order to solve the inconsistency of the two sets of vector information. Other experiments revealed the characteristics of visual information processing that would support the suggested great performance of landmark use in pigeons.

Free Research Field

比較認知科学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

メインの実験から，ハトの優れた帰巣能力を支えるランドマーク使用方略が明らかになった。すなわち，ハトの優れた帰巣能力は，ベクトル情報だけではなく，ランドマークの配置情報を使っていることに支えられている可能性が示唆された。これらのハトのランドマーク使用の集中的な検討は，比較認知研究領域での議論に一石を投じるものである。また，ハトと比較してヒトのナビゲーション能力の不足している点が明らかになったため，ナビゲーションソフトウェアの情報呈示法の改良につながることが期待できる。