How do animals actually solve the T maze?

Rats were trained on a reinforced, delayed alternation T-maze task in the p resence (cue group) or absence (no-cue group) of salient extramaze landmark s. A surprising finding was that the acquisition and memory performance of the 2 groups did not differ. Manipulations of the extramaze landmarks for t he cue group suggested that, although landmarks were used to guide behavior , other sources of information were also used normally. The no-cue group wa s able to perform the task at above-chance levels even when extramaze. intr amaze, and inertial sources of orientation were manipulated. These results suggest that memory performance on the T maze does not rely exclusively on the processing of allocentric spatial relationships in the maze environment .