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Search in external and internal spaces: evidence for generalized cognitive search processes
Thomas T Hills1, Peter M Todd, Robert L Goldstone
1Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Indiana University, Indiana, USA. thomas.hills@unibas.ch
Psychological Science
|September 26, 2008
Summary
Physical spatial foraging primes abstract cognitive search. Individual search styles persisted across tasks, suggesting generalized cognitive search processes, linking foraging behavior to cognition.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Neuroscience
- Behavioral Ecology
Background:
- Goal-directed cognition shows evolutionary links to spatial-foraging behavior.
- Dopaminergic pathways in animals regulate foraging strategies (exploration vs. exploitation) and attention.
Purpose of the Study:
- To test the hypothesis that spatial-foraging activity can prime attentional cognitive activity.
- To investigate how physical space search influences subsequent abstract cognitive search.
Main Methods:
- Participants completed a spatial-foraging task in physical space.
- Following the spatial task, participants performed a repeated Scrabble task, searching for words within letter sets.
- Analysis focused on how spatial search patterns influenced abstract word search behavior.
Main Results:
- Participants who engaged in clumpier spatial search distributions subsequently treated word distributions in the Scrabble task as more clumped.
- This effect was not attributable to arousal but aligned with optimal-foraging theory predictions.
- Individual differences in exploratory search tendencies were consistent across both physical and abstract tasks.
Conclusions:
- Spatial-foraging behavior can prime subsequent abstract cognitive search processes.
- The findings support the existence of generalized cognitive search mechanisms that operate across different domains.
- This research bridges biological and cognitive evidence, suggesting a unified basis for search behavior.
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