ABSTRACT
Animals move from one place to another in pursuit of various goals. Sometimes they may do this by homing on a recognized object or place, directed by a light or sound or odor emanating from the goal (beacon navigation). At other times, they may execute a motor routine that has brought them from one place to the other in the past (motor program navigation). In either of these cases, the process underlying the behavior makes no use of a representation of the spatial characteristics of the environment. Some feats of navigation, however, seem to imply the use of a spatial representation. By spatial representation, we mean a record that reflects certain spatial facts about an environment the animal has experienced, but which, unlike a motor program, does not specify any particular performance. The information in a spatial representation, unlike a motor program, may be used to generate a performance that is not foreseen at the time the representation is established and is not specified by the representation itself.
