ORIGINAL PAPER Facilitation of learning spatial relations among locations by visual cues: generality across spatial configurations Bradley R. Sturz Æ Debbie M. Kelly Æ Michael F. Brown Received: 20 July 2009 / Revised: 10 September 2009 / Accepted: 14 September 2009 / Published online: 24 September 2009 Ó Springer-Verlag 2009 Abstract Spatial pattern learning permits the learning of the location of objects in space relative to each other without reference to discrete visual landmarks or environ- mental geometry. In the present experiment, we investi- gated conditions that facilitate spatial pattern learning. Specifically, human participants searched in a real envi- ronment or interactive 3-D computer-generated virtual environment open-field search task for four hidden goal locations arranged in a diamond configuration located in a 5 9 5 matrix of raised bins. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three groups: Pattern Only, Land- mark ? Pattern, or Cues ? Pattern. All participants expe- rienced a Training phase followed by a Testing phase. Visual cues were coincident with the goal locations during Training only in the Cues ? Pattern group whereas a sin- gle visual cue at a non-goal location maintained a consis- tent spatial relationship with the goal locations during Training only in the Landmark ? Pattern group. All groups were then tested in the absence of visual cues. Results in both environments indicated that participants in all three groups learned the spatial configuration of goal locations. The presence of the visual cues during Training facilitated acquisition of the task for the Land- mark ? Pattern and Cues ? Pattern groups compared to the Pattern Only group. During Testing the Land- mark ? Pattern and Cues ? Pattern groups did not differ when their respective visual cues were removed. Further- more, during Testing the performance of these two groups was superior to the Pattern Only group. Results generalize prior research to a different configuration of spatial loca- tions, isolate spatial pattern learning as the process facili- tated by visual cues, and indicate that the facilitation of learning spatial relations among locations by visual cues does not require coincident visual cues. Keywords Virtual environment Á Open-field Á Spatial pattern Á Facilitation Á Cue competition Introduction At least two sources of spatial information are available to mobile animals as they navigate their environments: landmarks and environmental geometry (for a review, see Shettleworth 1998). Encoding of landmark information allows determination of position and orientation with ref- erence to objects in the environment with known positions whereas encoding of geometric information allows deter- mination of position and orientation with reference to geometric properties of a surrounding enclosure (Cheng 1986; for a review, see Cheng and Newcombe 2005). Theoretical accounts of spatial learning differ with respect to how these sources of spatial information are learned: either collectively by a unitary associative-based system B. R. Sturz (&) Department of Psychology, Armstrong Atlantic State University, 229 Science Center, 11935 Abercorn Street, Savannah, GA 31419, USA e-mail: bradley.sturz@armstrong.edu D. M. Kelly Department of Psychology, University of Saskatchewan, 9 Campus Drive, Saskatoon, SK S7N 5A5, Canada e-mail: debbie.kelly@usask.ca M. F. Brown Department of Psychology, Villanova University, 800 Lancaster Ave, Villanova, PA 19085, USA e-mail: michael.brown@villanova.edu 123 Anim Cogn (2010) 13:341–349 DOI 10.1007/s10071-009-0283-3