Is addressable memory required for spatial cognition?: Poster

Abstract

This paper investigates the computational basis of the temporal and spatial cognition that underlies certain animal behaviours. For example, ants, when they find food, are able to encode the compass direction which takes them back to their nest. In their (2009) book, Memory and the Computational Brain (MCB), Gallistel and King articulate a classicist view: animals must do this using a symbolic, addressable, read-write memory. Here we challenge this view, arguing that complex behaviour can be explained by computational mechanisms which do not need to look like addressable random-access memory.