The algorithms used to partition the work area and to generate the excavator path were developed as the critical components of the task planner.
By comparing responses to the three stimulus conditions, it was possible to identify two groups of brain regions responsive to different components of the task.
Although the amount of time spent fixating on the target item did not differ across groups, participants with autism took significantly longer to complete several components of the task and fixate upon the regions of the picture required for task completion (e.g. face or target).
We found that lesions of the hippocampal formation impaired learning of both mnemonic components of the task.
If successful sequential tool use is dependent on behavioural chaining (see above) then only subjects who received experience with all components of the task should succeed.
However, some of the subjects with hippocampal lesions were able to acquire both the inbound and outbound components of the task by the end of the 10-day test sequence.
Secondly, in most studies [7], [8], [12], [13], [27], where sufficient detail is provided to be able to tell, subjects were pre-trained in the main components of the task before testing.
Compared to control rats that had undergone sham surgeries, rats with extensive lesions of the hippocampal formation made more errors and took longer to reach learning criterion on both the inbound (reference memory) and outbound (working memory) components of the task.
Of course, as with any test on adult animals living in natural or enriched environments, each subject is likely to have had different experiences prior to experimentation: it is possible, though unlikely, that subjects had learned the separate components of the task in which they were tested, and were thereafter chaining these learned skills [26].
In contrast, subjects that had not been trained on all components of the task never solved it (for example, those birds trained only to push the box and not to climb on it, or those trained only to climb on the box and not to push it).
