Potential mechanisms by which kin are discriminated are categorized into four classes: spatial distribution, familiarity, phenotype matching, and "direct genetic detection" (sensu "recognition alleles" or the "green beard effect").
Object-in-place associative recognition memory requires both familiarity detection and spatial information.
Of course, training on the eight-arm task is likely to lead to directed or maintained attention towards the relative familiarity of the spatial cues.
During the black/white alley test, as the trial proceeded and as the rat habituated to the novel environment, the increased familiarity of the spatial cues led to a reduction in exploration.
One possibility is that people create spatial analogies in gesture because of their familiarity with spatial analogies from diagrams.
Results indicate participants use household-level strategies for insect control that reveal familiarity with the concept of spatial repellent and contact irritant actions of chemicals and that placing traps in the peridomestic environment to remove repelled mosquitoes was acceptable.
This measure was also used to determine whether or not group differences in the other spatial measures might have been due to differences in familiarity.
Our study extends this work by examining three metaphors to clarify further whether differences can be attributed to the metaphor's structure being spatial (versus non-spatial) or because it has greater familiarity.
We have argued recently, based on studies in genetically modified mice, that rodents perform efficiently on win-shift, spatial working memory maze tasks by comparing the relative familiarity of the different arms of the maze (Sanderson et al., 2010).
The research underlines how social interaction is influenced both by residential trajectories, leading to more or less familiarity and social distance with the neighbourhood, and spatial configurations, leading to various opportunities for social contact in public spaces.
