Year: 2005
Type: article
Abstract: When navigating by path integration, knowledge of one’s position becomes increasingly uncertain as one walks from a known location. This uncertainty decreases if one perceives a known landmark location nearby. We hypothesized that remembering landmarks might serve a similar purpose for path integration as directly perceiving them. If this is true, walking near a remembered landmark location should enhance response consistency in path integration tasks. To test this, we asked participants to view a target and then attempt to walk to it without vision. Some participants saw the target plus a landmark during the preview. Compared with no-landmark trials, response consistency nearly doubled when participants passed near the remembered landmark location. Similar results were obtained when participants could audibly perceive the landmark while walking. A control experiment ruled out perceptual context effects during the preview. We conclude that remembered landmarks can enhance path integration even though they are not directly perceived. An important function of vision is to facilitate navigation from one location to another. Even if we are lost within a large environment such as an unfamiliar city, vision provides information about where we are relative to nearby objects. This on-going stream of information allows us to keep track of our current location in the local environment as we progress through it. A variety of animals are quite good at keeping track of their location while walking even when vision is not available (Etienne, Maurer, & Séguinot, 1996). Humans are no exception, and in fact the average human can sight a target up to 20 m away or more, and then walk to it quite accurately while
Authors: Shannon O´Leary, John W. Philbeck
Institution: University of Wollongong
Language: English
Subfield: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2165262265