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Updated: Jun 30, 2026

The (Spatial) Memory Game: Testing the Relationship Between Spatial Language, Object Knowledge, and Spatial Cognition
Published on: February 19, 2018
Functional role theories of representation and content explanation: with a case study from spatial cognition
1University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany. andreas.bartels@uni-bonn.de
Abstract:
The aim of this paper is to show that the widespread opinion, according to which functional role theories of representation fail to account for content explanations of human and animal behaviour, cannot be confirmed with respect to each type of functional role theory. Functional resemblance theories (as referred to by O'Brien and Opie in Representation in mind, Elsevier, 2004) allow for content explanations of successfully performed cognitive abilities as much as for explanations of systematic errors resulting from misrepresentation. How functional roles do their explanatory work in actual scientific research examples is shown by a detailed exploration of model assumptions about homing performances based on path integration mechanisms in humans and animals.
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