Priming and Conservation Between Spatial and Cognitive Search

There is compelling molecular and behavioral evidence that human goal-directed cognition is an evolutionary descendent of animal foraging behavior. A key observation is that similar dopaminergic processes are used to modulate between exploratory and exploitative foraging behaviors and control attention across animal species. Moreover, defects in these processes lead to predictable goal-directed cognitive pathologies in humans, such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and Parkinson’s disease. However, the cognitive relationships between exploration in space and exploration in the mind have not been examined. Using a spatial foraging task with two treatment conditions (clumpy and diffuse), followed by a word search task involving patches of words to be found in letter sets, we show that individuals who experienced clumpy resource distributions in space behave as if resources are more densely clumped in the word search task, relative to those who experienced the diffuse spatial treatment. We show this is not a function of general arousal but is consistent with longer givingup times in the word search task, which is a qualitative prediction of optimal foraging theory. We also show that behavioral tendencies during search are conserved within individuals: Those who explore more of the physical space leave letter sets sooner. Along with the biological evidence, our results support a general search process underlying cognition, which operates both in external and internal environments.