Publications [#304745] of John E. Staddon

Journal Articles

1. Reid, AK; Staddon, JER (1998). A Dynamic Route Finder for the Cognitive Map. Psychological Review, 105(3), 585-601. [Gateway.cgi], [doi]
   (last updated on 2024/04/18)

   Abstract:
   Cognitive behaviorist E. C. Tolman (1932) proposed many years ago that rats and men navigate with the aid of cognitive maps, but his theory was incomplete. Critic E. R. Guthrie (1935) pointed out that Tolman's maps lack a rule for action, a route finder. We show that a dynamic model for stimulus generalization based on an elementary diffusion process can reproduce the qualitative properties of spatial orientation in animals: area-restricted search in the open field, finding shortcuts, barrier learning (the Umweg problem), spatial "insight" in mazes, and radial maze behavior. The model provides a behavioristic reader for Tolman's cognitive map.