# An Experimental Study on the Formation of Spatial Cognitive Maps in Humans
## 4 Discussion  
This study investigated how cognitive maps of the environment are formed. Its purpose was to determine whether they emerge abruptly or gradually, whether they exhibit a set-size effect, and whether their speed of emergence and set-size effect depend on the spatial perspective from which spatial information is encoded. During learning trials, participants explored a virtual maze either via simulated movements through the maze (Maze condition, first-person perspective) or by inspecting a schematic map (Control condition, survey perspective). Within both conditions, they had to indicate the locations of previously encountered objects on a schematic map (survey perspective) during interleaved test trials. In accordance with earlier research on spatial skills (e.g., [12; 13]), response correctness varied widely. Nevertheless, statistical analyses provided robust evidence, albeit with small effect sizes, that correctness (1) increased across learning trials and (2) was higher in the Control than in the Maze condition. The difference between conditions was substantial, averaging about 0.25 on a scale from 0 to 1, and can be seen as an indicator of cognitive demand [26]. Specifically, the cognitive demand could be higher in the Maze condition as, unlike in the Control condition, spatial knowledge had to be transformed from a first-person perspective into a survey perspective. Under the criteria for the reinstation of effects described in the Data Analysis section, the present data do not confirm that localization is better near physical or perceived boundaries of the explored space compared to more central regions [14; 15]. This deviating result could indicate that merely confining the explored space to a subregion of the total space, with free view beyond that subregion (cf. Figure 1a), is not sufficient to elicit a boundary effect. Alternatively, 12 or 16 objects may not be enough to differentiate between boundaries and centers. Additional work is therefore needed to elucidate the boundary effect. Regarding the main purpose of this study, the emergence speed of cognitive maps, the present data confirmed [8; 9; 10] that mean accuracy progressively increases across test trials (cf. Figures 2 and 3). While this overall trend suggests a gradual learning process, a fine-grained statistical analysis indicated that cognitive maps actually formed in a locally abrupt, all-or-none fashion. Thus, response correctness following a hit was substantially higher than that following an incorrect response, and was not much lower than predicted by the abrupt-emergence view. In other words, once a participant correctly localized a given object, (s)he was very likely to correctly localize that object again during the next test trial. This was the case in both experiments, i.e., in both groups of 56 participants. These findings suggests that the gradual increase observed in Figures 2 and 3, and possibly also earlier research [8; 9; 10], may be an artifact of averaging across participants and objects. The sudden emergence of cognitive maps aligns with the phenomenon of reorientation, in which individuals abruptly regain their sense of direction after a period of spatial uncertainty [16; 17]. Comparable discontinuities, named \"aha-effects\" or \"insights\", have \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{l c c c c} \hline
**Term** & \(\chi^{2}\) & \(p\) & \(\mathbf{f^{2}}\) & **Action** \\ \hline Condition:Test:Hit & 0.47 & 0.495 & \textless{}0.001 & remove \\ Test:Condition & 2.58 & 0.108 & 0.001 & remove \\ Test:Hit & 11.38 & \textless{}0.001 & 0.002 & remove \\ Condition:Hit & 2.25 & 0.134 & \textless{}0.001 & remove \\ Test & 35.46 & \textless{}0.001 & 0.007 & remove \\ Condition & 187.22 & \textless{}0.001 & **0.039** & **reinstate** \\ Hit & 226.35 & \textless{}0.001 & **0.048** & **reinstate** \\ \hline \end{tabular} Note: column names as in Table 1.  
\end{table} 
Table 5: Logistic regression for response correctness conditional on a hit in Exp. 2.  
also been reported in other domains of cognitive psychology [31; 32].