Alignment Effect: Primary – Secondary Learning and Cognitive Styles

Abstract

The degree to which the way of learning spatial information (primary/secondary learning) and spatial cognitive style (landmark/route/survey) affect orientation specificity (alignment effect) is studied. We think that the most important factor explaining the absence of the alignment effect is the spatial cognitive style. We hypothesise that while landmark participants show an alignment effect after both primary and secondary learning, route participants show this effect only after secondary learning, and survey participants do not show it at all. Participants performed three tasks in order to distinguish their cognitive style; they were then randomly assigned to primary or secondary learning and submitted to directional judgment tasks to verify whether the alignment effect was present. The results confirm our hypothesis.

Perspective changing in WalCT and VR-WalCT: A gender difference study [WalCT – VR-WalCT: Gender differences]

“…Blindfolded participants were seated in a wheelchair located at the end of the room and wheeled to the path. We use this typically practice (e.g., Nori et al, 2006) in order to be sure that participants do not have any point of reference apart of the path that they have to acquire. Then, the experimenter asked the participant to stand up, the blindfolding was removed, and s/he was led to the beginning of the path, and was led by the experimenter along 8-step sequence.…”

“…Their task was to image the learnt path the same or rotated from some extent, and to reproduce it. The order of these different degrees of perspectives was determined randomly for each path and the same order was used for all participants (Nori et al, 2006). For each path, the examiner recorded the points/locations correctly reproduced.…”

“…1). The order of these different perspectives was determined randomly for each path and the same order was used for all participants (Nori et al, 2006). For each path, the number of the points/locations correctly reproduced on the path for each angle was recorded directly by the PC program.…”

“…The classic paradigm involves acquiring the spatial location of some objects located in a room, environment or map and successively pointing to them before and after moving to a new position/orientation either physically or imaginarily. Generally, these studies (e.g., Nori, Grandicelli, & Giusberti, 2006;Shelton & McNamara, 2004;Wilson, Tlauka, & Wildbur, 1999) have shown that mental representations are memorized according to a preferred point of view, usually aligned with a real or imaginary viewpoint experienced; this property of mental representation is called orientation dependence. The orientation-specific representation is http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2015.07.015 0747-5632/Ó 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.…”

“…But in certain circumstances the effect of orientation dependence does not occur or does not alter the performance or mitigate it. There are various factors that contribute to the disappearance or the reduction of the alignment effect: familiarity with the environment (Nori & Piccardi, 2011;Piccardi et al, 2011aPiccardi et al, , 2011b, environmental characteristics (Sholl & Nolin, 1997), the motor, proprioceptive and vestibular information (Richardson, Montello, & Hegarty, 1999;Rossano, West, Robertson, Wayne, & Chase, 1999;Sun, Campos, & Chan, 2004), primary learning (Presson & Hazelrigg, 1984) and the strategies or spatial cognitive style used to acquire spatial information (Nori & Giusberti, 2003;Nori et al, 2006;Rossano, Warren, & Kenan, 1995). Regardless of the way spatial information is learned, women seem to be less proficient than men in orienting themselves during navigation (e.g., Halpern, 2000).…”