Consolidation of cognitive maps as a gradual process

Abstract Cognitive maps of the environment are initially encoded in a fragile form susceptible to interference, but they can stabilized over time – a process called “consolidation”. This study investigated whether consolidation is a gradual or an all-or-none process. In the main condition, participants formed first a map of environment A, then a map of environment B, and then returned to A (sequence: A 1 ->B ->A 2 ). Performance increased from A 1 to A 2 , but this increase was smaller than in a control condition where B was replaced by a pause filled with unrelated activities (sequence: A 1 ->pause ->A 2 ). Performance remained comparable to the main condition when a pause was added after A 1 (sequence: A 1 ->pause ->B ->A 2 ), but improved and became comparable to the control condition when a replica of A 1 was added (sequence: A 1 ->A R ->B ->A 2 ). This pattern of findings suggests that (1) cognitive maps consolidate gradually rather than abruptly, and (2) consolidation proceeds during practice but not during pauses filled with other activities.