Scaling techniques for modeling directional knowledge

Waller, David; Haun, Daniel B. M.

doi:10.3758/bf03202554

Cited by 12 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 49 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Behavioral studies in humans support the proposition that navigation is based on heading vectors rather than step-by-step movement along a path of identifiable locations (Wang and Spelke, 2002;Waller and Haun, 2003;Muehl and Sholl, 2004;Spiers and Maguire, 2007). For example, Bailenson et al (2000) found that, given a choice between equal-distance routes between two points, subjects reliably chose the route whose initial segment direction was closer to the global vector to the goal.…”

Section: Human Navigationmentioning

confidence: 71%

Heading‐vector navigation based on head‐direction cells and path integration

Kubie

Fenton

2008

Hippocampus

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Insect navigation is guided by heading vectors that are computed by path integration. Mammalian navigation models, on the other hand, are typically based on map-like place representations provided by hippocampal place cells. Such models compute optimal routes as a continuous series of locations that connect the current location to a goal. We propose a "heading-vector" model in which head-direction cells or their derivatives serve both as key elements in constructing the optimal route and as the straight-line guidance during route execution. The model is based on a memory structure termed the "shortcut matrix," which is constructed during the initial exploration of an environment when a set of shortcut vectors between sequential pairs of visited waypoint locations is stored. A mechanism is proposed for calculating and storing these vectors that relies on a hypothesized cell type termed an "accumulating head-direction cell." Following exploration, shortcut vectors connecting all pairs of waypoint locations are computed by vector arithmetic and stored in the shortcut matrix. On re-entry, when local view or place representations query the shortcut matrix with a current waypoint and goal, a shortcut trajectory is retrieved. Since the trajectory direction is in head-direction compass coordinates, navigation is accomplished by tracking the firing of head-direction cells that are tuned to the heading angle. Section 1 of the manuscript describes the properties of accumulating head-direction cells. It then shows how accumulating head-direction cells can store local vectors and perform vector arithmetic to perform path-integration-based homing. Section 2 describes the construction and use of the shortcut matrix for computing direct paths between any pair of locations that have been registered in the shortcut matrix. In the discussion, we analyze the advantages of heading-based navigation over map-based navigation. Finally, we survey behavioral evidence that nonhippocampal, heading-based navigation is used in small mammals and humans.

show abstract

Section: Human Navigationmentioning

confidence: 71%

Heading‐vector navigation based on head‐direction cells and path integration

Kubie

Fenton

2008

Hippocampus

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…To generate such maps, we used a variant of multidimensional scaling (MDS) that uses interpoint bearing estimates (instead of distance estimates) in order to determine a twodimensional map of the environment that maximally fits each participant's data (see Waller & Haun, 2003). Figure 4 illustrates 95% confidence ellipses for the configurations derived from all the participants in both the pointing and the map placement tasks.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inertial cues do not enhance knowledge of environmental layout

Waller

Loomis

Steck

2003

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…However, MDS relies exclusively on estimations of distances to obtain configural representations of locations and ignores directional information (Waller & Haun, 2003). A technique that considers both distance and directional information is the Procrustes technique (Schönemann & Caroll, 1970).…”

Section: Study 1: Computational Text‐based Spatial Estimates Of CImentioning

confidence: 99%

Representing Spatial Structure Through Maps and Language: Lord of the Rings Encodes the Spatial Structure of Middle Earth

Louwerse

Benesh

2012

Cognitive Science

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Spatial mental representations can be derived from linguistic and non-linguistic sources of information. This study tested whether these representations could be formed from statistical linguistic frequencies of city names, and to what extent participants differed in their performance when they estimated spatial locations from language or maps. In a computational linguistic study, we demonstrated that co-occurrences of cities in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Hobbit predicted the authentic longitude and latitude of those cities in Middle Earth. In a human study, we showed that human spatial estimates of the location of cities were very similar regardless of whether participants read Tolkien's texts or memorized a map of Middle Earth. However, text-based location estimates obtained from statistical linguistic frequencies better predicted the human text-based estimates than the human map-based estimates. These findings suggest that language encodes spatial structure of cities, and that human cognitive map representations can come from implicit statistical linguistic patterns, from explicit non-linguistic perceptual information, or from both.

show abstract

Scaling techniques for modeling directional knowledge

Cited by 12 publications

References 49 publications

Heading‐vector navigation based on head‐direction cells and path integration

Heading‐vector navigation based on head‐direction cells and path integration

Inertial cues do not enhance knowledge of environmental layout

Representing Spatial Structure Through Maps and Language: Lord of the Rings Encodes the Spatial Structure of Middle Earth

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About