Psychophysics of Place Recognition

Abstract

Places are locations of special significance represented in spatial memory. Place recognition is a central task in spatial cognition that combines perception of local position information and ego-motion with working memories of adjacent places and long-term memory codes of the target place. In this paper, we examine the role of visual position information and place recognition and thus attempt to link spatial cognition to visual psychophysics. We present two experimental paradigms for assessing the visual processing involved in the formation of memory codes of place and the content of such memory codes. We also present a maximum likelihood model of place recognition from distant landmarks allowing detailed quantitative testing of the general assumptions. We conclude that place recognition is based on a visual working memory containing raw “snapshot” information as well as local depth maps of surrounding landmark objects.