External Cue Effects on Memory for Spatial Location within a Rotated Task Field

Moderating the route angularity effect in a virtual environment: Support for a dual memory representation

“…has demonstrated that fine-grained memory is fragile and quickly decays, resulting in greater reliance on categorical coding (Fitting, Wedell, & Allen, 2008a, 2008bMerchant, Fortes, & Georgopoulos, 2004;Spencer & Hund, 2002). Therefore, the resolution to this seeming contradiction is that feature accumulation utilizes categorical codes, which are distinct from the fine-grained codes of spatial distance.…”

Cue Effects on Memory for Location When Navigating Spatial Displays

“…Previous work has demonstrated that in the dot-location task, a fine-grain memory advantage exists for targets nearer the circumference and hence nearest to cues Fitting et al, 2008a). Those studies that involved rotation showed additional reduction in error as angular distance to the cues was reduced.…”

“…Finally, we have found it useful to model the error in fine-grain memory as a function of the distance from the target location to the cue locations Fitting et al, 2008aFitting et al, , 2008b. Although it is difficult to obtain a pure measure of fine-grain error, much of the variation in absolute error (i.e., the unsigned distance from estimate to actual location) is based on this source of error.…”

“…A very influential determinant of the number and locations of prototypes that our current study builds on is the set of external cues located around the task field. In our recently reported experiments in this area Fitting, Wedell, & Allen, 2008a, 2008b, participants reproduced the location of a dot in a circular region under conditions that varied the number and locations of cues placed along the perimeter of the task field. Results indicated that the category structure used to encode spatial location was highly dependent on the stability of one's orientation to the task field.…”

“…4a when fitting the data using a least-squared error criterion. Based on our earlier modeling of the dot-location task (Fitting et al, 2008a), we included a boundary-based cue, with weight b B , in the one-cue condition located 180°from the actual cue and that we have previously labeled a ''phantom cue.'' Conceptually, the phantom cue might arise by participants projecting a cue location opposite the actual cue and using that as a guide to locate targets that are far from the single cue.…”