Tolman's Cognitive Map Experiments

Edward Tolman, with Ritchie and Kalish, let rats explore a maze freely for several days with no food reward at all. When food was then placed at one point in the maze, the rats found it almost immediately, far faster than a group that had never explored the maze before. Tolman argued the unrewarded rats had already built an internal cognitive map of the maze during exploration, learning that stayed hidden (latent) until there was a reason to use it, a result hard to explain if learning only happens through reward. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/