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Environmental and Idiothetic Cues to Reference Frame Selection in Path Integration

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Spatial Cognition X (Spatial Cognition 2016, KogWis 2016)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 10523))

Abstract

The current study investigated the ways in which environmental and idiothetic cues affect the nature of the reference frame (i.e., egocentric or allocentric) in path integration in a virtual environment. Participants navigated to multiple waypoints and then attempted to walk or point to the first waypoint. We manipulated the environmental geometry, complexity of the outbound path, availability of idiothetic cues (vestibular, proprioceptive, & efferent motor information) and initial heading in the virtual environment to examine the reference frame in path integration. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that when idiothetic cues were present, participants adopted an egocentric reference frame regardless of the environmental geometry and outbound path complexity. Experiments 3 and 4 showed that when idiothetic cues were absent, participants adopted the initial heading as the reference direction. We concluded that unlike their marked influence on reference directions in spatial memory, environmental cues had little impact on the reference frame in path integration regardless of the availability of idiothetic cues.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on the previous version of this article. This research was supported in part by National Science Foundation Grant 1526448.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA

    Qiliang He & Timothy P. McNamara

  2. Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA

    Jonathan W. Kelly

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  1. Qiliang He
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  2. Timothy P. McNamara
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  3. Jonathan W. Kelly
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Timothy P. McNamara .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany

    Thomas Barkowsky

  2. Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts, USA

    Heather Burte

  3. ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Christoph Hölscher

  4. University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany

    Holger Schultheis

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He, Q., McNamara, T.P., Kelly, J.W. (2017). Environmental and Idiothetic Cues to Reference Frame Selection in Path Integration. In: Barkowsky, T., Burte, H., Hölscher, C., Schultheis, H. (eds) Spatial Cognition X. Spatial Cognition KogWis 2016 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10523. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68189-4_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68189-4_9

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