Integrating Learned Routes
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The layout of an environment must be learned from experience with particular
routes. One possibility is that path integration serves to link environmental
locations together into a metric "cognitive map", which enables new short-cuts.
However, Dyer (1991) found this was not the case in honeybees, who depend
on salient visual landmarks to find a shortcut to a known location. We are
investigating whether humans can integrate learned routes into metric spatial
knowledge, and if so, what factors influence this ability.
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Path Integration
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Path integration is a navigation strategy that utilizes information from
self-motion to estimate distances traveled and orientation changes while
exploring an environment. This information about self-motion can be
acquired from either visual information (optic flow, landmarks, etc.), body
senses (e.g., proprioceptive, vestibular, and efferent information), or
both. In the natural world, these two sources of information about
self-motion are redundant making it difficult to assess their separate roles
in path integration. Using a return-to-home task in virtual reality,
we can manipulate the availability of both visual information and body senses
to identify the relative roles of each in path integration.
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Navigational Strategies
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Do people rely on metric structure (distances and angles) or ordinal structure
(relationships between junctions and paths) when walking from one place
to another in a learned environment? This research is addressing what
knowledge about the properties of the environment people acquire and use
in navigation. We are exploring whether landmarks contribute to navigational
strategies, as well as the effect of initial learning on how an environment
is remembered and subsequently navigated. By using a virtual garden
"maze", we can monitor the paths people choose between various object locations
to determine the underlying structure of their spatial knowledge.
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