Head for the hills: The influence of environmental slant on spatial memory organization

Kelly, Jonathan W.

doi:10.3758/s13423-011-0100-2

Cited by 17 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 17 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…One was in the slope test, in which men were affected by conflict trial order (regular vs. inverse), but women were not. During the conflict trials, in a vertical displacement the correct landmark/card would assume a different position along the vertical axis of the slope gradient (an opposite elevation; if it used to be uphill, now it would be downhill); because the vertical axis of a slope is more salient than the horizontal (J. W. Kelly, 2011;Nardi et al, 2011), a vertical displacement causes a larger conflict than does a horizontal displacement. Receiving the larger conflict situation first in the conflict trials (inverse order) might have increased the participants' awareness of the slope to a greater degree than receiving the larger conflict second (regular order); this higher slope awareness could have determined the greater confidence for the correct corner when only slope was available (in the slope test).…”

Section: Sex Differencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reorienting with terrain slope and landmarks

2012

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Orientation (or reorientation) is the first step in navigation, because establishing a spatial frame of reference is essential for a sense of location and heading direction. Recent research on nonhuman animals has revealed that the vertical component of an environment provides an important source of spatial information, in both terrestrial and aquatic settings. Nonetheless, humans show large individual and sex differences in the ability to use terrain slope for reorientation. To understand why some participants-mainly women-exhibit a difficulty with slope, we tested reorientation in a richer environment than had been used previously, including both a tilted floor and a set of distinct objects that could be used as landmarks. This environment allowed for the use of two different strategies for solving the task, one based on directional cues (slope gradient) and one based on positional cues (landmarks). Overall, rather than using both cues, participants tended to focus on just one. Although men and women did not differ significantly in their encoding of or reliance on the two strategies, men showed greater confidence in solving the reorientation task. These facts suggest that one possible cause of the female difficulty with slope might be a generally lower spatial confidence during reorientation.Keywords Individual and sex differences . Spatial abilities . Reorientation . Slope . Geographical slant . Spatial confidence Few everyday cognitive abilities exhibit individual differences as marked as those seen in navigation tasks. It is apparent that some people are extremely good at finding their way, while others struggle and experience anxiety during the journey (e.g., Lawton, 1994;Schinazi, Epstein, Nardi, Newcombe, & Shipley, 2009). The complexity of the navigation process makes it difficult to understand the source of such variability in performance-after all, successful navigation depends on many component skills (e.g., perception, spatial memory, position updating, and construction of a mental map of the environment). Here we focus on the first step that any mobile animal encounters when navigating: establishing where it is and which direction it is facing. This step, often called orientation, or reorientation when orientation has been lost, is accomplished when a navigator identifies a key element of the environment (e.g., a sign, specific landmark, or familiar sound).A central question in the reorientation literature is whether any of these spatial cues has a more important role (is more salient) than others. For example, at least in small spaces, the geometric shape of the environment determined by bounding walls (e.g., in a room) seems to be a particularly strong type of reorienting cue-so strong that nonhuman animals (Cheng, 1986) and human children (Hermer & Spelke, 1994 tend to focus on this cue and disregard other, potentially more useful cues. However, the strength of geometric cues appears to wane as the space grows larger (Learmonth, Nadel, & Newcombe, 2002), for a variety of reasons that in...

show abstract

Section: Sex Differencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reorienting with terrain slope and landmarks

2012

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Research on the organizational properties of spatial memory indicates that locations are typically remembered in the context of a spatial reference system. Retrieval tasks such as imagined perspective taking (Shelton & McNamara, 2001) and map drawing (Kelly, 2011) typically reveal preferred access to spatial memories from one or two perspectives, which is considered evidence for a reference frame parallel to the facilitated perspective(s) (Klatzky, 1998). Reference frame selection is influenced by available cues during learning, including egocentric cues such as experienced perspectives (Kelly, Avraamides, & Loomis, 2007;Shelton & McNamara, 1997) and environmental cues such as room axes (Shelton & McNamara, 2001).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Haptic experiences influence visually acquired memories: Reference frames during multimodal spatial learning

2011

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In two experiments, we investigated whether reference frames acquired through touch could influence memories for locations learned through vision. Participants learned two objects through touch, and haptic egocentric (Experiment 1) and environmental (Experiment 2) cues encouraged selection of a specific reference frame. Participants later learned eight new objects through vision. Haptic cues were manipulated, whereas visual learning was held constant in order to observe any potential influence of the haptically experienced reference frame on memories for visually learned locations. When the haptically experienced reference frame was defined primarily by egocentric cues, cue manipulation had no effect on memories for objects learned through vision. Instead, visually learned locations were remembered using a reference frame selected from the visual study perspective. When the haptically experienced reference frame was defined by both egocentric and environmental cues, visually learned objects were remembered in the context of the haptically experienced reference frame. These findings support the common reference frame hypothesis, which proposes that locations learned through different sensory modalities are represented within a common reference frame.

show abstract

“…Evidence in support of hierarchical spatial representations has been collected for larger and more complex environments (Hirtle and Jonides 1985;McNamara et al 1989), which challenges the idea of a unified cognitive map with preserved geometric properties. However, studies using slanted virtual environments (Kelly 2011;Restat et al 2004; have not examined this possibility, and the current paradigm used to investigate slope in the real world cannot address this issue.…”

Section: Error Patternmentioning

confidence: 86%

“…However, this prioritization has only been demonstrated with steep inclinations (20°) and using non-human animal models (homing pigeons). In human studies, which have used non-comparable experimental procedures (e.g., shallower inclinations), the slope does not seem to dominate over other cues (Kelly 2011;Nardi et al 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Sex differences and errors in the use of terrain slope for navigation

et al. 2015

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Unlike most of the spatial cues that have received attention, a sloping terrain can be perceived by multimodal sensory inputs (vision, balance, and kinesthesia), making it potentially very salient for navigation. Furthermore, a homogeneous slope can be used like a compass to identify directions (e.g., uphill, downhill, and sideways), but not to determine distances. We briefly review recent evidence on navigation with slope, emphasizing two main findings. On the one hand, we focus on the conspicuous sex difference found in the ability to localize a target in a square, tilted enclosure; this has emerged in human adults and children, and we suggest that it is related to lower awareness of the slope for females. On the other hand, we describe the general pattern of errors that arises when localizing the target during the task; these errors indicate the use of a bi-coordinate representation of the slope. Limitations and ideas for future studies are proposed.

show abstract

Head for the hills: The influence of environmental slant on spatial memory organization

Cited by 17 publications

References 17 publications

Reorienting with terrain slope and landmarks

Reorienting with terrain slope and landmarks

Haptic experiences influence visually acquired memories: Reference frames during multimodal spatial learning

Sex differences and errors in the use of terrain slope for navigation

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About