Question

Why were Tolman’s radial arm maze experiments important for cognitive psychology? Which result of these experiments could not be explained from a purely behaviourist perspective?

Answer 1

In a classic study by Tolman and Honzik, rats were trained to run through a complicated maze. One group, the reward group, received a food reward in the goal box at the end of the maze on each of their daily trial. A second group, the no reward/reward group, never received a reward. The third group, the no reward group, did not receive a food reward until the 11th day of training. Rats of the reward group showed steady improvement in performance, decreasing the number of errors they made in reaching the gold box. Rats in the no reward group should only a slight improvement in performance. Rats in the no reward/reward group showed performance similar to those in the no reward group - for the first ten days. However their performance improved dramatically immediately after the introduction of the food reward. In fact, the performance was as good as that of rats who had been rewarded for their performance all along.
In fact, Tolman theorized that the rats might have formed what he termed a cognitive map - a mental representation of the maze. Although the existence of such maps has not yet been clearly established. A growing body of evidence supports the view that animals do, in fact, form mental representation of their environment - perhaps even memories of them. It is shown that memories associated with bigger rewards lead to a greater increase in responding than do memories of small reward or non reward.