The acquisition of vector knowledge and its relation to self-rated direction sense.

Self-rated sense of direction is reliably related to people's accuracy when pointing in the direction of unseen landmarks from imagined or actual perspectives. It is proposed that the cognitive substrate of accurate pointing responses is a vector representation, which is defined as an integrated network of displacement vectors. Experiment 1 isolated the body senses and tested displacement vector formation in a path-integration task. Experiment 2 isolated the visual modality and tested displacement vector formation in a virtual-learning task. Both experiments tested whether people reporting a good sense of direction (GSOD) were more likely to compute displacement vectors than people reporting a poor sense of direction (PSOD). The results showed that both GSOD and PSOD people computed displacement vectors in the path-integration task, but not in the virtual-learning task. When interlandmark relations were visually specified, GSOD people made more accurate pointing responses than PSOD people, adding to a growing body of cognitive correlates of self-rated direction sense.

[1]  Anthony E. Richardson,et al.  Development of a self-report measure of environmental spatial ability. , 2002 .

[2]  M. Sholl,et al.  The role of self-to-object updating in orientation-free performance on spatial-memory tasks. , 2002, Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition.

[3]  M. Jeanne Sholl,et al.  The Role of a Self-Reference System in Spatial Navigation , 2001, COSIT.

[4]  M. Jeanne Sholl,et al.  The Functional Separability of Self-Reference and Object-to-Object Systems in Spatial Memory , 2000 .

[5]  Seán O. Nualláin.  Spatial cognition : foundations and applications : selected papers from Mind III, Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society of Ireland, 1998 , 2000 .

[6]  B. Roskos-Ewoldsen,et al.  THE RELATIONS AMONG WAYFINDING STRATEGY USE, SENSE OF DIRECTION, SEX, FAMILIARITY, AND WAYFINDING ABILITY , 2000 .

[7]  Anthony E. Richardson,et al.  A Comparison of Methods for Estimating Directions in Egocentric Space , 1999, Perception.

[8]  Anthony E. Richardson,et al.  Spatial knowledge acquisition from maps and from navigation in real and virtual environments , 1999, Memory & cognition.

[9]  Richard B. Chase,et al.  THE ACQUISITION OF ROUTE AND SURVEY KNOWLEDGE FROM COMPUTER MODELS , 1999 .

[10]  Sarah S. Chance,et al.  Spatial Updating of Self-Position and Orientation During Real, Imagined, and Virtual Locomotion , 1998 .

[11]  Clark C. Presson,et al.  Orientation Specificity in Representations of Place , 1997 .

[12]  T. McNamara,et al.  Multiple views of spatial memory , 1997 .

[13]  D. R. Montello,et al.  Integrating Knowledge of Vertically Aligned Large-Scale Spaces , 1993 .

[14]  R. Klatzky,et al.  Nonvisual navigation by blind and sighted: assessment of path integration ability. , 1993, Journal of experimental psychology. General.

[15]  Daniel R. Montello,et al.  The measurement of cognitive distance: Methods and construct validity , 1991 .

[16]  B. McNaughton,et al.  Dead Reckoning, Landmark Learning, and the Sense of Direction: A Neurophysiological and Computational Hypothesis , 1991, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[17]  R. Klatzky,et al.  Acquisition of route and survey knowledge in the absence of vision. , 1990, Journal of motor behavior.

[18]  D. R. Montello,et al.  Remembering Changes in Direction , 1989 .

[19]  M. Sholl.  The relation between sense of direction and mental geographic updating , 1988 .

[20]  J. Rieser,et al.  Sensitivity to Perspective Structure While Walking without Vision , 1986, Perception.

[21]  K. J. Bryant.  Personality correlates of sense of direction and geographical orientation. , 1982, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[22]  Barbara Hayes-Roth,et al.  Differences in spatial knowledge acquired from maps and navigation , 1982, Cognitive Psychology.

[23]  T. Gärling,et al.  Acquisition of locational information about reference points during blindfolded and sighted locomotion: effects of a concurrent task and locomotion paths. , 1981, Scandinavian journal of psychology.

[24]  John Jonides,et al.  Cognitive maps: Analysis of comparative judgments of distance , 1979 .

[25]  L. Kozlowski,et al.  Sense of Direction, Spatial Orientation, and Cognitive Maps. , 1977 .

[26]  D. Canter,et al.  Distance Estimation in Cities , 1975 .

[27]  Werner Kuhn,et al.  Spatial Information Theory. Foundations of Geographic Information Science , 2003, Lecture Notes in Computer Science.

[28]  T. McNamara,et al.  Mental representations of large and small spatial layouts are orientation dependent. , 1998, Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition.

[29]  I. Israël,et al.  Self-rotation estimate about the vertical axis. , 1995, Acta oto-laryngologica.

[30]  C. Gallistel.  The organization of learning , 1990 .

[31]  J. Gibson.  The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception , 1979 .

[32]  W. Kintsch,et al.  Memory and cognition , 1977 .