Fixed versus dynamic orientations in environmental learning from ground-level and aerial perspectives

Abstract

Ground-level and aerial perspectives in virtual space provide simplified conditions for investigating differences between exploratory navigation and map reading in large-scale environmental learning. General similarities and differences in ground-level and aerial encoding have been identified, but little is known about the specific characteristics that differentiate them. One such characteristic is the need to process orientation; ground-level encoding (and navigation) typically requires dynamic orientations, whereas aerial encoding (and map reading) is typically conducted in a fixed orientation. The present study investigated how this factor affected spatial processing by comparing ground-level and aerial encoding to a hybrid condition: aerial-with-turns. Experiment 1 demonstrated that scene recognition was sensitive to both perspective (ground-level or aerial) and orientation (dynamic or fixed). Experiment 2 investigated brain activation during encoding, revealing regions that were preferentially activated perspective as in previous studies (Shelton and Gabrieli in J Neurosci 22:2711-2717, 2002), but also identifying regions that were preferentially activated as a function of the presence or absence of turns. Together, these results differentiated the behavioral and brain consequences attributable to changes in orientation from those attributable to other characteristics of ground-level and aerial perspectives, providing leverage on how orientation information is processed in everyday spatial learning.

Object Properties and Frame of Reference in Spatial Memory Representations

“…Within subjects effects and contrasts were Geisser-Greenhouse corrected for non-sphericity. We observed a significant main effect of orientation, Downloaded by [Uppsala universitetsbibliotek] at 04:48 11 October 2014 Previous studies using JRDs have not found consistent effects of sex (e.g., Shelton & McNamara, 1997, 2001a, 2001b, 2004a, 2004bShelton & Pippitt, 2007;Yamamoto & Shelton, 2005, 2009a, 2009b, and the direction of these effects, when observed on any given experiment, tends to be females more accurate than males as often as the reverse. There was no significant main effect of condition, F .2; 42/ D 1:537, p D 0:227.…”

“…These results were consistent with subjective observations recorded during the model reconstruction task. The striking result was the lack of strong correspondence between the preferred orientation in JRDs and orientation of model reconstruction for the shared orientation condition, suggesting that these two tasks may tap into different aspects of the mental representation(s) formed during encoding as suggested by other types of cross-task comparisons (e.g., Shelton & McNamara, 2004a, 2004bShelton & Pippitt, 2007;Valiquette & McNamara, 2007).…”

Altered medial temporal lobe responses during visuospatial encoding in healthy APOE*4 carriers

“…In this study we examined older, cognitively normal APOE*4+ and APOE*4− subjects while they engaged in a perspective dependent spatial memory task which has been shown to activate the MTLs in young subjects (55,57). Separate encoding and recognition periods were evaluated to determine the extent that MTL activation is influenced by the APOE*4 allele and to explore if memory processing (encoding) and retrieval (recognition) are similarly affected.…”

From maps to navigation: The role of cues in finding locations in a virtual environment

“…An advantage of learning from a map is that it provides an overview of the environment that aids relational encoding; however, an advantage of learning through navigation is that there is no need to switch from an allocentric to an egocentric frame of reference. Maps typically also provide a stable orientation to the environment, unlike navigating from an egocentric view, which is very dynamic (Shelton & Pippitt, 2007). One general conclusion from this research is that people benefit from maintaining the same orientation and task goals (route or survey goal) during retrieval that were present during encoding (Taylor, Naylor, & Chechile, 1999).…”