NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Patrick Goold
Date: 2012 Feb 20, 07:43 -0500
Is the Map in Our Head Oriented North?
Julia Frankenstein1,2, Betty J. Mohler1, Heinrich H. Bülthoff1,3, and Tobias Meilinger1
Abstract
We examined how a highly familiar environmental space—one's city of residence—is
represented in memory. Twenty-six participants faced a photo-realistic virtual model of their
hometown and completed a task in which they pointed to familiar target locations in various
body orientations. Each participant's performance was most accurate when he or she was facing
north, and errors increased as participants’ deviation from a north-facing orientation increased.
Pointing errors and latencies were not related to the distance between participants’ initial
locations and the target locations. Our results are inconsistent with accounts of orientation-free
memory and with theories assuming that the storage of spatial knowledge depends on local
reference frames. Although participants recognized familiar local views in their initial locations,
their strategy for pointing relied on a single, north-oriented reference frame that was likely
acquired from maps rather than experience from daily exploration. Even though participants had
spent significantly more time navigating the city than looking at maps, their pointing behavior
seemed to rely on a north-oriented mental map.
The original article is published as a research report in Psychological Science (DOI: 10.1177/0956797611429467). I can send you a copy if you do not have access to this journal.
Best regards,
Patrick
--
Dr. Patrick Goold
Department of Philosophy
Virginia Wesleyan College
Norfolk, VA 23502
757 455 3357