Orientation Specific and Geometric Determinant of Mental Representation of the Virtual Room

Subjects in the experiment reported observed the same spatial layout in the rectangular room and the cylindrical room from the exocentric ( 450 ) perspective first and then the egocentric ( 00 ) perspective. The mental representations of space were testified by the judgment of relative direction between objects. The results showed that subjects represented the spatial horizontal relation more accurately along the imagined direction that paralleled to the wall in the rectangular room but along the imagined direction that was ever faced in the cylindrical room. The rectangular room better facilitated the coding of spatial vertical information than the cylindrical room. Subjects could respond faster when retrieving the spatial relations in the direction faced during the observation. The data indicated that the orientation-specific representation was constructed and the environmental geometry could influence the accuracy of spatial direction in mind.