Abstract
This study investigated the interaction between remembered landmark and path integration strategies for estimating current location when walking in an environment without vision. We asked whether observers navigating without vision only rely on path integration information to judge their location, or whether remembered landmarks also influence judgments. Participants estimated their location in a hallway after viewing a target (remembered landmark cue) and then walking blindfolded to the same or a conflicting location (path integration cue). We found that participants averaged remembered landmark and path integration information when they judged that both sources provided congruent information about location, which resulted in more precise estimates compared to estimates made with only path integration. In conclusion, humans integrate remembered landmarks and path integration in a gated fashion, dependent on the congruency of the information. Humans can flexibly combine information about remembered landmarks with path integration cues while navigating without visual information.
Highlights
As we travel in the world, we can use a number of features in the environment as landmarks to help determine our location
Except for the 9 meter target, viewing targets with blur did not alter how participants weighed remembered landmark versus path integration information. This result is surprising considering that blurry vision greatly impaired the precision of estimates made with only remembered landmarks (Figure S1 and Table S1). These results suggest that remembered landmarks can bias perceived location when they are thought to be congruent with path integration information
We found that use of remembered landmarks increased the precision of localization estimates compared to when only path integration information was available (F(2,24) = 49.59, p,0.001 for 7 and 9 m targets, F(2,22) = 21.26, p,0.001 for 5 and 11 m targets, Figure 5)
Summary
As we travel in the world, we can use a number of features in the environment as landmarks to help determine our location. To maintain a sense of where they are in such situations, humans rely on their estimates of the direction and velocity of travel obtained from vestibular, proprioceptive, and kinesthetic senses, here referred to as path integration. In these cases, do humans use their memory of landmarks to navigate, or do they purely rely on path integration?. Cognitive maps allow observers to navigate in the absence of directly perceived landmarks, as demonstrated in visually-directed walking tasks; participants can accurately view a landmark and walk to it blindfolded, thereby using their memory of the landmark’s location to guide their walk [5,6,7]
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