Between floor navigation cost depends on visual information

While navigation often occurs seamlessly, some environments prove to be challenging. Previous research has shown that people have difficulty keeping track of target locations across nested environments. Here we examined whether spatial updating is affected by traveling across floors. Participants traversed back and forth along a path connecting two floors, and pointed to target locations on the path. They were more accurate when pointing to targets within a floor than across floors. This increased error was not due to difference in distance, learning exposure, or the amount of movement in the two conditions. Furthermore, when participants were blindfolded, the across floor cost disappeared. These results are consistent with the capacity limitation hypothesis in the spatial updating system, which leads to dropping target vectors across environments. The results also suggest that vision plays an important role in the segmentation of the environmental representations for navigation.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.A.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Psychology

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2012

Author dc:creator

• Street, Whitney

Contributors dc:contributor

• Wang, Ranxiao F.

• navigation
• spatial updating
• environmental representation

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2011 Whitney Street

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/29487

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/29487