Combining Path Integration and Remembered Landmarks When Navigating without Vision

Abstract

This study investigated the interaction between remembered landmark and path integration strategies for estimating current location when walking in an environment without vision. We asked whether observers navigating without vision only rely on path integration information to judge their location, or whether remembered landmarks also influence judgments. Participants estimated their location in a hallway after viewing a target (remembered landmark cue) and then walking blindfolded to the same or a conflicting location (path integration cue). We found that participants averaged remembered landmark and path integration information when they judged that both sources provided congruent information about location, which resulted in more precise estimates compared to estimates made with only path integration. In conclusion, humans integrate remembered landmarks and path integration in a gated fashion, dependent on the congruency of the information. Humans can flexibly combine information about remembered landmarks with path integration cues while navigating without visual information.

A review of assistive spatial orientation and navigation technologies for the visually impaired

“…A number of features in the environment can be used to help determine the location. To maintain a sense of where they are in such situations, humans rely on their estimates of the direction and velocity of movement obtained from their vestibular, proprioceptive, and kinesthetic senses, here referred to as path integration [96].…”

Functional connections between optic flow areas and navigationally responsive brain regions during goal-directed navigation

“…Path integration tracks changes in position and orientation (Wolbers et al, 2007), provides vector knowledge of motion relative to a location (Weiner et al, 2011), and can be used to navigate in an environment towards an intended goal or remembered location (Sherrill et al, 2013;Kalia et al, 2013). Although everyday navigation often relies on landmarks, path integration is an underlying process that updates representations of position and orientation based on self-motion perceptual signals when landmarks may not be present or reliable (May and Klatzky, 2000;Foo et al, 2005).…”

Bias in Human Path Integration Is Predicted by Properties of Grid Cells

“…It is likely that biases in behavior reflect distortions present throughout the brain networks responsible for tracking self-location and generating spatial responses. Our participants reported using various cognitive strategies to locate the target (e.g., attending to distal landmarks, using boundaries as landmarks) and must have experienced using memories of the environments to guide their return paths [26][27][28]. Our conjecture in experiments 1 and 2 that grid spacing was restored when participants executed the return path might correspond at the cognitive level to using memories of the priming enclosure to guide the return path; likewise, the assumption in experiment 3 that grid spacing was maintained during the outbound path in distortion trials might correspond at the cognitive level to imagining the priming enclosure during the outbound path (see Supplemental Information for tests of one such model).…”