Fig. 1.

Task design and performance. The virtual water maze was a circular, beach-themed arena (a). The mountains and palm trees (b) served as north and south directional headings, respectively. Participants were prompted to begin searching at the start of each trial (c). They were initialized in the center of the arena. For the first 5 s, the ground appeared green, and they could only rotate in place. The ground then turned to sand, and participants could freely navigate. When they found an egg, they were instructed to return to the same location on the next trial. On the trial after that, they began searching for a new egg location. We quantified location crossings and time in location during participant navigation (d). The timeline graphs depict results from an example participant who showed increased navigation to both locations over the course of the experiment. The places where the timeline jumps up to the dotted line (indicated by stars) mark the moments when a location was crossed, and the lengths at which the timeline remains along the dotted line (indicated by black lines) correspond to how long the participant was in those locations.