Does crossing one's path result in greater uncertainty in one's internal sense of direction (path integration)? The present study addressed this issue using immersive virtual reality involving matched paths with and without a crossover. Crossed compared to uncrossed paths showed greater pointing variability to the start location; the location of the crossover also had an effect on pointing variability. A simple vector addition model was not able to capture these results, suggesting the need for additional assumptions. These findings suggest that a looped crossover path incurs more errors in path integration, suggesting important constraints on models of path integration.
This study explores spatial association in the use of reference types for subway stations, shopping centers, parks, and health centers within the Persian language, specifically in Tehran, Iran. Using global and local join count statistics, we identify clustered patterns in the use of proper and common nouns. We employ a random forest model to predict referential choice based on geospatial and textual features, specifically for subway stations. Our prediction analysis demonstrates the feasibility of forecasting referential choice, with recall and precision values of 0.66 and 0.68, respectively, enhancing understanding of how language interacts with spatial contexts.
Wayfinding strategies are shaped by environmental features and individual differences. This study examined how directing attention to a global landmark, configural knowledge, and trait spatial anxiety influence wayfinding strategies in an outdoor environment. Participants learned a route, with the experimental group reminded to attend a distal mountain range. No group differences emerged in configural knowledge or wayfinding strategies. Individual differences analyses revealed that better configural knowledge and lower spatial anxiety independently predicted shortcutting, and spatial anxiety mediated sex differences in strategy use. These findings advance understanding of how environmental characteristics and individual dispositions shape spatial layout learning and wayfinding strategies.
Little is known about how parental spatial language input relates to children's spatial cognition or mathematics performance or how children's own spatial language develops. The current study examined spatial language at 24 months (N = 187 families; 105 boys) and 48 months (N = 115 families; 66 boys), and spatial cognition and number performance at 48 months. Child spatial language was predominantly from the categories of "deictics," "location and direction," "continuous amount" and "spatial dimensions" at both timepoints. The diversity of parents' spatial language (spatial language quality) at 24 months was longitudinally associated with child numeracy at 48 months. Findings are discussed in relation to existing literature.
Despite the 3D nature of our world, spatial learning in multilayer or volumetric environments remains underexplored, partly due to lack of assessment tools. We adapted the judgment of relative direction (JRD) into virtual reality (VR-JRD) to assess 3D directional knowledge. Participants explored a multilevel virtual building, followed by the VR-JRD and map-sketching tasks. Results support the construct validity of VR-JRD and its dominant relevance to large-scale cognitive mapping across horizontal and vertical planes. Both tasks revealed anisotropic memory performance and internal representations consistent with theoretical predictions. This study contributes a validated tool for examining spatial cognition in vertically extended spaces.
Spatial learning and memory allow individuals to navigate and plan routes. While research has largely focused on acquiring new spatial information, long-established mental representations have been less explored. This paper examines how aging affects spatial memory, showing that while older adults may struggle to form new spatial memories, their recall of familiar environments remains mostly intact. The study advocates incorporating remote spatial memory tasks into cognitive assessments and research, to better understand and support spatial orientation skills across the lifespan.
This scoping review explores and describes how electroencephalography (EEG) has been used to study higher-order spatial orientation and navigation in healthy adults. 22 studies were included, where key findings highlighted the presence of theta (especially frontal-midline) during spatial memory encoding and alpha desynchronization during complex wayfinding. Event-related potentials revealed rapid changes in neural processing tied to path decisions, reward feedback, and navigation errors. Source localization findings suggest regions such as the retrosplenial complex and posterior parietal cortex are involved in egocentric and allocentric strategies. These results reinforce the value of EEG in capturing unique neural activity underlying spatial navigation.
This study investigated two variables that may impact wayfinding decisions: time pressure and active error corrections. Participants traveled through five virtual mazes, each designed for a specific wayfinding strategy. At each intersection, they had either 3 seconds or unlimited time to decide where to proceed, and they either did or did not actively correct their decision errors. Decision accuracy was reduced under time pressure only with wayfinding strategies requiring an internal representation of space, and that active corrections had little impact on accuracy with all strategies. Thus, time pressure but not the need to correct were determinants of wayfinding accuracy.
Multisensory cue combination during navigation is examined for the relative use and integration of different sensory spatial cues, but the reliability of cue combination metrics has not yet been characterized. We quantify the test-retest reliability of three metrics (accuracy, variability, predicted cue-weighting) used in studies of sensory cue combination for spatial updating. Participants completed a triangular homing task in immersive virtual reality comprising three cue conditions - visual cues-only, self-motion cues-only, and visual + self-motion cues - in two sessions separated by an average 11-day interval. We found strong test-retest reliability of homing accuracy with two sensory cues but poor reliability of accuracy when only one sensory cue was available. Homing variability and predicted cue-weighting showed poor test-retest reliability across all conditions.
This paper explores the potential of using machine-generated descriptions to characterize a place in a way that humans can identify it. It presents a hybrid approach for generating place descriptions by combining rule-based generation of spatial relation facts with a LLM that converts these facts into natural language descriptions. The study focuses on urban areas and street-level scale, using OpenStreetMap as the primary data source. The rule-based method is informed by an experimental study that analyzed human-made place descriptions to understand reference object types used, their quantities, distances, and spatial relations. An experiment is carried out to assess the quality of machine-generated descriptions compared to human-made descriptions in a place identification task. The evaluation involved 70 participants identifying locations based on both human and machine-generated descriptions across a 200-hectare urban area. The results show that the same average identification accuracy was not achieved. However, the proposed method reached lower variance and the difference in accuracy is not substantial enough to impede place identification in the anticipated use cases. The method shows promise for applications in navigation systems, virtual assistants, and location-based services, particularly in situations where visual media cannot be used.
To evaluate the interplay between route following by the serial order and the associative cue strategy, participants who had repeatedly followed a route were asked to recall the serial order of directions, and the direction associated with each cue. For initial and final intersections of the route, most participants responded correctly on both tests. For intermediate intersections, many responded correctly on the associative recall test only. This suggests that many participants used both route following strategies concurrently at some intersections, but only the associative cue strategy at other intersections. This varying interplay of strategies probably reflects primacy and recency effects.
Image schemas are mental patterns learned from perceptual experiences capturing conceptual constructions in expressions. In linguistic analysis, their visualizations are often context-dependent without a generalizable structure. Addressing this, we introduce The Diagrammatic Image Schema Language: a formal representation language that systematizes a set of visual combination rules for different conceptual primitives from the cognitive science literature. These primitives are distinguished from a formal point of view to allow for more general application. DISL also contains a logical exchange format in which the diagrams may be made machine-readable. Using DISL, the semantic structure of complex scenarios can be represented and computed.
We evaluate the difficulty of route-following in built environments. Participants repeatedly followed a route with 18 or 12 intersections, each with three or two choices. One group saw distinctive visual cues near each intersection, while a second group did not. In both groups, route-following accuracy increased by a similar amount when the number of intersections or choices decreased. Reaction time varied reciprocally to accuracy only with visual cues. Realistic optic flow decreased accuracy only without visual cues. We conclude that the number of intersections and choices were equivalent determinants of task difficulty, and that optic flow interfered with anticipatory decision-making.
Within this article, we hypothesize that, in the virtual space of pan-scalar maps, i.e. interactive, multi-scale and zoomable web maps, the map components perceived by the map user during a zoom can mimic the qualities of real-world anchors or landmarks to help self-localization in map. This article explores the characterizations of these potential cartographic anchors through the analysis of overlapping digital drawings on map views, collected with an online user survey. Our results allow us to identify possible cartographic anchors, characterize them in their variability, identify similar logics despite variations in localization, and discuss origins of these perceptual comparisons.
This study explored luminance as magnitude stimulus to systematically investigate how the Simon effect influences the spatial associations of magnitude stimuli across tasks. The results showed that (1) the SNARC effect was absent in the magnitude stimuli across location , color and magnitude classification tasks and (2) the Simon effect was stable across these tasks. In addition, the SNARC effect and the Simon effect did not interact across these tasks. The results imply that the spatial associations of magnitude stimuli are inhibited by the magnitude stimuli locations when the location and magnitude information overlap.
Spatial reorientation guided by the proprioceptive information derived from walking on a slanted floor has revealed large individual and sex differences. Here we addressed the role of body characteristics and measures of stability and balance-related sensory function from computerized dynamic posturography. Blindfolded participants walked in a slanted arena and had to identify the uphill direction (Perceptual task) and use the slope to remember the location of a target object (Memory task). Male participants performed better in the Perceptual task. In the Memory task, heavier participants made smaller errors, suggesting that body mass may influence how we navigate in the environment.
Humans increasingly rely on mobile maps to facilitate everyday mobility. These omnipresent navigation aids deteriorate spatial learning by captivating users’ attention. Landmarks facilitate spatial learning, yet, how to saliently depict them on mobile maps for guided attention and facilitated visual matching between the map and the environment remains an open question. We conducted a real-world navigation study to assess how 3D landmark visualizations (realistic vs. abstract) influence visual attention and spatial learning. Spatial learning with realistic landmarks improved when wayfinders exhibited shorter fixations on the map. Realistic landmarks also supported spatial learning of low spatial ability wayfinders. Our findings call for landmark depiction on mobile maps that go beyond “one fits all” and is based on human-adaptive design guidelines.
