Systems of Spatial Reference in Human Memory

Abstract

Seven experiments examined the spatial reference systems used in memory to represent the locations of objects in the environment. Participants learned the locations of common objects in a room and then made judgments of relative direction using their memories of the layout (e.g., ''Imagine you are standing at the shoe, facing the lamp; point to the clock''). The experiments manipulated the number of views that observers were allowed to experience, the presence or absence of local and global reference systems (e.g., a rectangular mat on which objects were placed and the walls of the room, respectively), and the congruence of local and global reference systems. Judgments of relative direction were more accurate for imagined headings parallel to study views than for imagined headings parallel to novel views, even with up to three study views. However, study views misaligned with salient reference systems in the environment were not strongly represented if they were experienced in the context of aligned views. Novel views aligned with a local reference system were, under certain conditions, easier to imagine than were novel views misaligned with the local reference system. We propose that learning and remembering the spatial structure of the surrounding environment involves interpreting the layout in terms of a spatial reference system. This reference system is imposed on the environment but defined by egocentric experience. © 2001 Elsevier Science Spatial reference systems are essential for the specification of location and orientation in space. The location of Nashville, for example, can be specified by describing its position with respect to the boundaries of the state (e.g., Nashville is in the middle of Tennessee), by providing coordinates of latitude The authors thank Jeffrey Schall, Kyle Cave, Jeffery Franks, and Ted Payne for various contributions to the research. We also thank the reviewers for comments on earlier drafts.

Functional Equivalence of Spatial Representations Derived From Vision and Language: Evidence From Allocentric Judgments.

“…A recent theory of spatial memory by McNamara and colleagues (e.g., McNamara, 2003;Mou & McNamara, 2002;Shelton & McNamara, 2001) proposes the latter possibility. According to this theory, interobject relations are represented in a spatial image organized in terms of an intrinsic reference frame chosen on the basis of various cues (e.g., egocentric viewpoint, instructions, characteristics of the layout).…”

Geometric determinants of human spatial memory

“…Hahnloser, 2003;Skaggs, Knierim, Kudrimoti, & McNaughton, 1995;Taube, 1998). Operation of this process could also help to explain the egocentric bias in reaction-time and performance measures often found in spatial memory (Diwadkar & McNamara, 1997; see also King et al, 2002) and increased performance in spatial memory tasks where novel viewpoints are aligned with distal cues (McNamara et al, 2003;Burgess et al, in press;Shelton & McNamara, 2001). …”

“…For instance, behavioral evidence for the involvement of allocentric representations in human spatial memory comes from accuracy or reaction time advantages which are observed when object location memory is tested from novel viewpoints aligned with the walls of the testing room (Mou & McNamara, 2002;Shelton & McNamara, 2001) or with external landmarks (Burgess, Spiers, & Paleologou, in press;McNamara, Rump, & Werner, 2003). These results suggest that representations of the objects' locations include their relationship to cues which are fixed with respect to the world, even though these cues vary in their relationship to the subject.…”

Human place and response learning: navigation strategy selection, pupil size and gaze behavior

“…The former process is consistent with an account of place learning in which spatial knowledge is associated with views of landmarks experienced during learning (Hamilton, Driscoll & Sutherland, 2002). In the current paradigm, this process would rely on a viewpoint-dependent representation of an intersection (Shelton & McNamara, 2001;Wang & Spelke, 2002) subjected to mental rotation or perspective-taking transformations (see Hegarty & Waller, 2004), both of which have been implicated in a number of navigational tasks (Kozhevnikov, Motes, Rasch & Blajenkova, 2006). Such viewpoint-dependent place recognition should be sensitive to approach direction and would incur cognitive and time related costs that increased relative to the angular discrepancy between the approach directions experienced during training and test (Diwadkar & McNamara, 1997;King, Burgess, Hartley, Vargha-Khadem & O'Keefe, 2002).…”