Integration of spatial information across vision and language

Do environmental characteristics predict spatial memory about unfamiliar environments?

“…(2) We expected that pointing to buildings within the same route would be more accurate than pointing to buildings across different routes. This prediction follows previous studies indicating that people typically maintain spatial information from separate routes or spatial arrays in separate representations (e.g., Weisberg et al, 2014, which used the same virtual environment as here, as well as Ishikawa & Montello, 2006;Meilinger, Berthoz & Wiener, 2011;Pantelides, Kelly & Avraamides, 2016;Weisberg & Newcombe, 2016; but see Moar & Carleton, 1982). Such a finding would support the hypothesis that people encode spatial relations hierarchically (Hirtle & Jonides, 1985) and replicate the results of previous studies using pointing tasks (e.g., Weisberg & Newcombe, 2016).…”

“…Together, findings from both tasks support the idea that when people study routes or spatial layouts with spatial and temporal separation, they typically maintain them in distinct representations (Meilinger et al, 2011;Pantelides et al, 2016;Weisberg et al, 2014;Weisberg & Newcombe, 2016; but see Moar & Carleton, 1982). These findings are also in line with hierarchical accounts of spatial memory (Hirtle & Jonides, 1985; see also Greenauer & Waller, 2010), which propose that locations can be maintained in separate clusters whose spatial relations are represented at different levels in a hierarchy.…”

“…Such a finding would support the hypothesis that people encode spatial relations hierarchically (Hirtle & Jonides, 1985) and replicate the results of previous studies using pointing tasks (e.g., Weisberg & Newcombe, 2016). (3) Following the reasoning outlined above, we expected that performance on the model building task would be inferior for the entire model (with all eight buildings) than for each of the two routes (with subsets of four buildings), providing further support for the maintenance of separate spatial representations in memory 1 Such a finding would replicate conceptually, by using a task other than pointing, the prior finding that spatial relationships among landmarks experienced in separate routes are not well integrated in a single representation (Meilinger et al, 2011;Pantelides et al, 2016;Weisberg et al, 2014;Weisberg & Newcombe, 2016; but see Moar & Carleton, 1982). 1 We did not examine how Space Syntax values predict performance on the model building task as this task yields a single measure of performance for the entire environment (or alternatively, a score for each of the subsets of buildings from the two routes).…”

Qualitative differences in memory for vista and environmental spaces are caused by opaque borders, not movement or successive presentation

“…To date, better performance for closer targets with regards to traveled distances in ES was mainly found in the inspection of errors (Thorndyke & Hayes-Roth, 1982), but not latency. However, since an increase in error over corridor distance could result also from error accumulation during learning (thus, memory precision), we assume latency to be a more suitable criterion for indicating processing time (thus, retrieval) (see also Pantelides et al, 2016). We hypothesized an incremental process when recalling memory acquired in ES.…”

“…Whereas accuracy might be associated with the encoding process, that is, the precision of memory, latency during pointing relates to the process of retrieval, that is, accessing the memory content (see also Pantelides, Kelly, & Avraamides, 2016). The assumption that error and latency do reflect distinct aspects of cognition is used in other literature as well (Prinzmetal, McCool, & Park, 2005;Sternberg, 1969).…”