Between floor navigation cost depends on visual information

Street, Whitney

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/29487 Copy

Description

Title

Between floor navigation cost depends on visual information

Author(s)

Street, Whitney

Issue Date

2012-02-01T00:48:55Z

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Wang, Ranxiao F.

Department of Study

Psychology

Discipline

Psychology

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

M.A.

Degree Level

Thesis

Keyword(s)

• navigation
• spatial updating
• environmental representation

Abstract

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.

Graduation Semester

2011-12

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

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2011 Whitney Street

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