Lateralization of Route Continuation and Route Order

Navigation is a complex cognitive ability and its structure is still poorly understood. Memory for route continuation and route order are hypothesized to be at least partially separate components of navigation ability. In the current experiment, participants studied a route in virtual reality. The dissociation between route continuation (“what turn did you make here?”) and route order (“which object did you see first?”) was tested in a visual half field paradigm, to assess lateralization patterns. Route continuation showed a left visual field advantage and route order a trend for a right visual field bias. This outcome further substantiates a dissociation between spatial and spatiotemporal aspects of navigation in humans.

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