Spatial Mental Representations Research Articles

On prior visual experience in mental map navigation using allocentric and egocentric perspectives in the visually impaired.

Using new developments in the mental comparison task paradigm, this study addresses the question of the influence of prior visual experience in the natural use of mental perspective to achieve mental spatial tasks without any protocol-imposed perspective. During the experiment, 39 participants (11 early blind, 13 late blind, and 15 blindfolded-sighted) explored two corridor maps to memorise the spatial arrangement of 10 objects disposed along corridors. After the learning phase, several tasks addressing spatial memory and reasoning used in the mental spatial representation were performed. Blindfolded-sighted participants preferred an egocentric perspective, while the two visually impaired groups showed no overriding preference between egocentric and allocentric perspectives. Results showed a performance advantage for egocentric over allocentric perspectives, regardless of visual experience. Our results shed light on previous assumptions regarding cognitive mental map construction, suggesting the need to reflect on previous results and their dependence on imposed mental perspectives.

Moorea lagoon fishers’ mental maps: An exploratory analysis of Polynesian spatial knowledge

AbstractThis empirical study builds upon prior research concerning cultural influences on spatial mental representations in Oceania. A comprehensive examination of 93 mental maps sourced from 59 lagoon fishers of Moorea (French Polynesia) reveals interesting facts about the way they organize and share their spatial knowledge. Firstly, consistent with previous studies across Oceania, Polynesian fishers exhibit a preference for the allocentric perspective when representing their environment. Secondly, they generally rely on marine landmarks for navigation, with a particular emphasis on four entities: the reef barrier, maritime beacons, coral outcrops, and a key chromatic marker — Moana (blue in Tahitian) — indicating the depth of the lagoon. Finally, the factor analysis we conducted highlights two significant facts: (1) a geographical self‐censorship, demonstrated by the low presence or even the absence of landmarks useful for locating their fishing spots; (2) a continuum between the surface and the depths of the lagoon, showing that surface fishers (line, net, troll, etc.) have a proven knowledge of seabed topography, whereas underwater speargun fishers also rely on landmarks located above the water.

Collective interactions, collaborative inhibition, and shared spatial knowledge

ABSTRACT Research on spatial mental representations focuses on individual mental maps and spatial knowledge. This exploratory study investigates instead collective interactions, collaborative memory, and the sharing of spatial knowledge. Based on the principle of collaborative inhibition (i.e., people recall information less effectively in groups), we posed the following research question: How do collective interactions, occurring during environmental exploration and group drawing sessions, affect collaborative inhibition, and the quality of sketch maps designed collectively? We conducted in situ explorations in Plaine St-Denis (France) with real-time tracking, followed by individual and group drawing sessions. This experiment involved 118 participants divided into three groups: (1) solo explorations without devices; (2) solo explorations with a mobile mapping application; (3) collective explorations using the same application enhanced with interaction features (viewing collective routes and photos of visited places). The comparison of the total number of entities found on individual mental maps with those included in collective sketch maps reveals that collaborative inhibition applies to spatial memory. Additional findings indicate that the use of a map, combined with collective interactions, mitigates collaborative inhibition and increases the accuracy of the sketch maps. However, the effect of such interactions on group dynamics remains unclear as of now.

Cognitive inhibition abilities explain inter-individual variability in gender-space associations.

There is a great deal of research describing the close association that exists between numerical and spatial representations, illustrating the SNARC (Spatial-Numerical Association of Response Code) effect. This effect signals the spatial mental representation of small numbers to the left and larger numbers to the right, coinciding with the direction of reading and writing. Subsequent research has found a similar spatial representation for other stimuli (e.g., size of objects and animals, and words associated with time). Some of these spatially represented stimuli are social in nature, even suggesting a spatial mental organization of stimuli based on gender (e.g., the upper part of a vertical axis for males and the lower part for females). The aim of the present study was threefold (1) to replicate and extend results on the existence of a mental gender line (as a function of response hand: female-left hand and male-right hand) when responding simply to gender of stimuli; (2) to explore the influence of inhibitory control; and, (3) to determine whether gender-space associations depend on the explicit or implicit nature of a gender task. Three experiments were designed to pursue these objectives. In Experiment 1, female, male and neutral faces and names were displayed, and the participants were asked to identify their gender. Experiment 2, which also included a Stroop task, followed the same procedure as Experiment 1, but displayed objects that could be designated as female or male and others not related to any gender. Finally, in Experiment 3, in which participants were asked to respond to the direction of an arrow, object gender was not relevant to the task. Consistent with previous research and confirming our hypotheses, the results showed a spatial mental representation of the stimuli based on gender in all three experiments, regardless of whether the stimulus was consciously perceived. Moreover, inhibitory ability showed a relationship with the gender-space line effect. The contributions and implications of this study are discussed, as are possible limitations and future lines of research.

Distortions in Spatial Mental Representation Affect Sketch Maps in Young Adults.

Humans tend to misrepresent spatial information which leads to systematic errors due to distorted organizational processes regarding metric and positional judgments. This study is aimed at analyzing metric and positional distortions in cognitive maps by using external representations, namely sketch maps, in two experiments with young participants. In the first experiment, we use the sketching area of Northern Europe. In the second experiment, the University campus area was used. The first aim was to test the hypothesis that the presence of the sea between the triplet of landmarks generates an overestimation of the distances between them in the case of Northern Europe; and to test the hypothesis that the number of turns in a route influences the overestimation of the distance between landmarks in the case of the campus area. The second aim was to investigate alignment and rotation errors using the same maps. Concerning metric errors, the results showed the overestimation of distances with a geographical gap between the cities (the sea in the Northern European Area), and those with more turns between landmarks (the campus area). The results concerning rotations and alignments were in line with the previous research about positional errors. The present study extended findings on distortions in spatial mental representation as emerging from verbal judgments, to sketch maps: direct visuospatial external representations eluding the conversion into verbal coding of spatial information. The presence of distortions in cognitive maps could be considered the consequence of the encoding of spatial information.

Spatial Memory and Blindness: The Role of Visual Loss on the Exploration and Memorization of Spatialized Sounds.

Spatial memory relies on encoding, storing, and retrieval of knowledge about objects’ positions in their surrounding environment. Blind people have to rely on sensory modalities other than vision to memorize items that are spatially displaced, however, to date, very little is known about the influence of early visual deprivation on a person’s ability to remember and process sound locations. To fill this gap, we tested sighted and congenitally blind adults and adolescents in an audio-spatial memory task inspired by the classical card game “Memory.” In this research, subjects (blind, n = 12; sighted, n = 12) had to find pairs among sounds (i.e., animal calls) displaced on an audio-tactile device composed of loudspeakers covered by tactile sensors. To accomplish this task, participants had to remember the spatialized sounds’ position and develop a proper mental spatial representation of their locations. The test was divided into two experimental conditions of increasing difficulty dependent on the number of sounds to be remembered (8 vs. 24). Results showed that sighted participants outperformed blind participants in both conditions. Findings were discussed considering the crucial role of visual experience in properly manipulating auditory spatial representations, particularly in relation to the ability to explore complex acoustic configurations.

Pupil size variations reveal covert shifts of attention induced by numbers

The pupil light response is more than a pure reflexive mechanism that reacts to the amount of light entering the eye. The pupil size may also react to the luminance of objects lying in the visual periphery, revealing the locus of covert attention. In the present study, we took advantage of this response to study the spatial coding of abstract concepts with no physical counterpart: numbers. The participants' gaze was maintained fixed in the middle of a screen whose left and right parts were dark or bright, and variations in pupil size were recorded during an auditory number comparison task. The results showed that small numbers accentuated pupil dilation when the darker part of the screen was on the left, while large numbers accentuated pupil dilation when the darker part of the screen was on the right. This finding provides direct evidence for covert attention shifts on a left-to-right oriented mental spatial representation of numbers. From a more general perspective, it shows that the pupillary response to light is subject to modulation from spatial attention mechanisms operating on mental contents.

Map Learning in Aging Individuals: The Role of Cognitive Functioning and Visuospatial Factors

Aging coincides with a decline in map learning ability, but it is unclear to what extent different aspects of the mental representation are susceptible. The present study aimed to investigate knowledge about landmarks, their positions and distances (categorical and distance relations, respectively) in relation to aging as well as cognitive functioning (measured with the Montreal Cognitive Assessment [MoCA]), visuospatial abilities, and self-reported wayfinding inclinations. Thirty young adults and 60 older adults (30 aged 63–74 and 30 aged 75–86) learned a map, freely recalled the landmarks and performed a map drawing task (considering the number of landmarks missing, position accuracy and distance accuracy). Before that, older participants were also assessed regarding their general cognitive functioning (MoCA) and a series of visuospatial measures. The results show age-related differences among adults in recalling landmarks and in both categorical and distance relations, with a worsening of performance of old-olds only in the former. Older adults’ MoCA score related to accuracy in the three measures, and an additional role of spatial anxiety was found for distance accuracy. Above and beyond the age-related decline, the quality of older people’s spatial mental representation is related to higher general cognitive level and lower spatial anxiety.

The influence of environmental context on spatial learning. Openness of the environment and spatial mental representations in the city of Venice

Field of view (FOV) allows us to perceive and learn our environment. Reducing the visual field impairs our ability to estimate distance and direction. It has been demonstrated that distance is estimated more accurately in outdoor environment (a lawn) than in indoors (hallway or lobby). This evidence suggests that features like width of environment, that is the openness of the environment that extends into periphery, might be important in affecting spatial representation. We studied route learning in Venice where features may or may not restrict the width of environment. Seventy participants learned narrow and wide routes from videos, then performed various spatial recall tasks. Results showed that environmental features that restricted the width of environment impaired participants’ pointing performance, and the metric properties of their mental representations. This study newly shows that environmental features naturally restricting the width of environment can influence the ability to form spatial mental representations.

Perceiving power: A study of spatial relations as perceptual symbols

The Perky Effect (from Perky, 1910) broadly concerns the interaction of imagined and perceived stimuli. Typically this interaction has been interference, although some recent research has suggested language evoked spatial representations could actually facilitate perceptual task performance at corresponding spatial locations. The current study explored whether comprehending language interfered with or facilitated the perceptual task at the implied spatial locations as a matter of language length. In Study 1, participants read power words followed by a figure recognition task that appeared at either the upper or lower part of the screen. It was found comprehending power words interfered with perception of the visual stimulus at the implied spatial locations. Study 2 used the same paradigm but with power sentences. We failed to observe the interaction between the power sentences and the visual figure spatial location. The combined results of Study 1 and Study 2 suggest that the spatial mental representations of language are consistent with past perceptual research on the Perky Effect, but only as a short-lived phenomenon.

Single-trial regression of spatial exploration behavior indicates posterior EEG alpha modulation to reflect egocentric coding.

Learning to navigate uncharted terrain is a key cognitive ability that emerges as a deeply embodied process, with eye movements and locomotion proving most useful to sample the environment. We studied healthy human participants during active spatial learning of room-scale virtual reality (VR) mazes. In the invisible maze task, participants wearing a wireless electroencephalography (EEG) headset were free to explore their surroundings, only given the objective to build and foster a mental spatial representation of their environment. Spatial uncertainty was resolved by touching otherwise invisible walls that were briefly rendered visible inside VR, similar to finding your way in the dark. We showcase the capabilities of mobile brain/body imaging using VR, demonstrating several analysis approaches based on general linear models (GLMs) to reveal behavior-dependent brain dynamics. Confirming spatial learning via drawn sketch maps, we employed motion capture to image spatial exploration behavior describing a shift from initial exploration to subsequent exploitation of the mental representation. Using independent component analysis, the current work specifically targeted oscillations in response to wall touches reflecting isolated spatial learning events arising in deep posterior EEG sources located in the retrosplenial complex. Single-trial regression identified significant modulation of alpha oscillations by the immediate, egocentric, exploration behavior. When encountering novel walls, as well as with increasing walking distance between subsequent touches when encountering novel walls, alpha power decreased. We conclude that these oscillations play a prominent role during egocentric evidencing of allocentric spatial hypotheses.

The impact of age and familiarity with the environment on categorical and coordinate spatial relation representations.

Retrieving spatial information is a crucial everyday ability that is affected by age-related changes. Previous research has shown that this change is mediated by familiarity with an environment. The present research uses a series of landmark location tasks to extend and deepen our understanding of the role of aging in spatial mental representations of more or less familiar environments, also disentangling the contribution of coordinate and categorical spatial relations. The study tested the following hypotheses: (1) younger adults only have an advantage over the elderly in less familiar environments; (2) the advantage for categorical over coordinate spatial relations is mainly found for less familiar environments; and finally; (3) interactions between age, familiarity, and spatial relations might reveal that the effects of age and familiarity take different trajectories for coordinate and categorical spatial relations. Results confirmed that: (1) young people outperform the elderly only in less familiar environments; (2) there is a reduction in the difference between coordinate and categorical accuracy with increasing familiarity with the environment; while (3) the interaction between age and level of familiarity did not significantly differentiate coordinate from categorical spatial relations. In conclusion, the present study provides new evidence for the role of familiarity with geographical areas and its impact on the representation of categorical and coordinate relations, with practical implications for the assessment of topographical disorientation in aging.

The Road More Travelled: The Differential Effects of Spatial Experience in Young and Elderly Participants.

Our spatial mental representations allow us to give refined descriptions of the environment in terms of the relative locations and distances between objects and landmarks. In this study, we investigated the effects of familiarity with the everyday environment, in terms of frequency of exploration and mode of transportation, on categorical and coordinate spatial relations, on young and elderly participants, controlling for socio-demographic factors. Participants were tested with a general anamnesis, a neuropsychological assessment, measures of explorations and the Landmark Positioning on a Map task. The results showed: (a) a modest difference in performance with categorical spatial relations; (b) a larger difference in coordinate spatial relations; (c) a significant moderating effect of age on the relationship between familiarity and spatial relations, with a stronger relation among the elderly than the young. Ceteris paribus, the role of direct experience with exploring their hometown on spatial mental representations appeared to be more important in the elderly than in the young. This advantage appears to make the elderly wiser and likely protects them from the detrimental effects of aging on spatial mental representations.

Studying Individual Differences in Spatial Cognition Through Differential Item Functioning Analysis.

Background: In the field of spatial cognition, the study of individual differences represents a typical research topic. Gender and age have been prominently investigated. A promising statistical technique used to identify the different responses to items in relation to different group memberships is the Differential Item Functioning Analysis (DIF). The aim of the present study was to investigate the DIF of the Landmark positioning on a Map (LPM) task, across age groups (young and elderly) and gender, in a sample of 400 healthy human participants. Methods: LPM is a hometown map completion test based on well-known and familiar landmarks used to assess allocentric mental representations. DIF was assessed on LPM items two times: on categorical (i.e., positions) and coordinate (i.e., distances) scores, separately. Results: When positions and distances were difficult to assess with respect to the intended reference point, the probability to endorse the items seemed to get worse for the elderly compared to the younger participants. Instead other features of landmarks (high pleasantness, restorativeness) seemed to improve the elderly performance. A gender-related improvement of probability to endorse distance estimation of some landmarks, favoring women, emerged, probably associated with their repeated experiences with those landmarks. Overall, the complexity of the task seemed to have a differential impact on young and elderly people while gender-oriented activities and places seemed to have a differential impact on men and women. Conclusions: For the first time DIF was applied to a spatial mental representation task, based on the schematic sketch maps of the participants. The application of DIF to the study of individual differences in spatial cognition should become a systematic routine to early detect differential items, improving knowledge, as well as experimental control, on individual differences.

How Much Do We Learn from Addresses? On the Syntax, Semantics and Pragmatics of Addressing Systems

An address is a specification that refers to a unique location on Earth. While there has been a considerable amount of research on the syntactic structure of addressing systems in order to evaluate and improve their quality, aspects of semantics and pragmatics have been less explored. An address is primarily associated by humans to the elements of their spatial mental representations, but may also influence their spatial knowledge and activities through the level of detail it provides. Therefore, it is not only important how addressing components are structured, but it is also of interest to study their meaning as well as the pragmatics in relation to an interpreting agent. This article studies three forms of addresses (i.e., structured as in Austria, semi-formal as in Japan, and descriptive as in Iran) under the principles of semiotics (i.e., through levels of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics). Syntax is discussed through formal definitions of the addressing systems, while semantics and pragmatics are assessed through an agent-based model to explore how they influence spatial knowledge acquisition and growth.

Categorical & coordinate spatial information: Can they be disentangled in sketch maps?

Humans tend to encode the environment by means of two types of spatial relations: coordinate (metric) and categorical (nonmetric). The present research contributes to methods for disentangling the contribution of categorical and coordinates spatial relations in sketch maps and investigates the role of familiarity with spatial information in accurate encoding of these spatial relations. The results of three experiments show that as familiarity with spatial layout increases, differences between categorical and coordinate spatial relations tend to decrease. Moreover, they reveal that the way in which spatial information has been acquired – through navigation or map study - affects performance. Navigation favours coordinate encoding, while map study favours categorical encoding. Finally, gender differences did not emerge when spatial information was acquired through navigation, but they were present in the case of map study acquisition. In conclusion, it seems possible to extract reliable and independent information on both categorical and coordinate spatial mental representations using sketch maps.

Keeping Track of Time: The Role of Spatial and Embodied Cognition in the Comprehension of Nonlinear Storyworlds

a B s t r a c t: What allows an audience to make sense of stories with complex nonlinear time structures that are radically different from everyday experience? To address this question, we distinguish between two types of narrative nonlinearity: nonlinear storytelling (a non-chronological presentation of events in the narration) and nonlinear storyworlds (nonlinearity as a feature of the narrated world, for instance by way of time-travel or temporal loops). With most scholarly attention focusing on the former, here we focus on the latter, as the question of what allows audiences to make sense of strange and impossible storyworld temporalities has remained somewhat overlooked. Drawing on the available research on text comprehension, we first discuss how both strategies of nonlinearity affect narrative comprehension differently. We then ask what cognitive abilities allow spectators to engage with nonlinear storyworlds. Drawing on insights from conceptual metaphor theory and mental timeline theory, we propose that the comprehension of nonlinear storyworlds is facilitated by the cognitive ability to mentally represent time in terms of space. By metaphorically blending spatial and embodied concepts into narrative timelines, strategies of spatial mental representation allow spectators to conceive and comprehend various forms of phenomenologically non-experienceable time structures—a hypothesis we seek to demonstrate through several cases of nonlinear storyworlds from contemporary complex cinema. k e y W o r D s: Narrative complexity, nonlinearity, puzzle films, conceptual metaphors, mental timeline

Distorted mental spatial representation of multi-level buildings - Humans are biased towards equilateral shapes of height and width

A distorted model of a familiar multi-level building with a systematic overestimation of the height was demonstrated earlier in psychophysical and real world navigational tasks. In the current study we further investigated this phenomenon with a tablet-based application. Participants were asked to adjust height and width of the presented buildings to best match their memory of the dimensional ratio. The estimation errors between adjusted and true height-width ratios were analyzed. Additionally, familiarity with respect to in- and outside of the building as well as demographic data were acquired. A total of 142 subjects aged 21 to 90 years from the cities of Bern and Munich were tested. Major results were: (1) a median overestimation of the height of the multi-level buildings of 11%; (2) estimation errors were significantly less if the particular building was unknown to participants; (3) in contrast, the height of tower-like buildings was underestimated; (4) the height of long, flat shaped buildings was overestimated. (5) Further features, such as the architectonical complexity were critical. Overall, our internal models of large multi-level buildings are distorted due to multiple factors including geometric features and memory effects demonstrating that such individual models are not rigid but plastic with consequences for spatial orientation and navigation.

The effects of risk magnitude training on mapping risks on space.

Risk perception has recently been shown to reveal a mental spatial representation, with people responding faster to low-risk items on the left side, and high-risk items on the right side. Subjective risk perception has a stronger spatial representation than objective risk perception; however, both reveal small effect sizes. With risk magnitude being a new domain within spatial mapping literature, we sought to explore its nuances. Following discussion surrounding the relationship between spatial mapping and level of expertise, this study investigated the effect of training an objective risk magnitude sequence on mental spatial representations. Participants (n = 34) used their left and right hands to indicate whether eight risk stimuli were lower or higher risk than a referent activity, both before and after training. Training involved repetitively learning the objectively correct order of the same eight risk stimuli for approximately 15min. Pre-training results demonstrated the expected spatial representations. Contrary to our predictions, the spatial representation did not get stronger post-training, but instead disappeared. Previous research has demonstrated a loss of spatial-numerical mappings with increased task load. An increase in post-training reaction times could reflect an increase in task load due to a lack of adequate knowledge of risk stimulus order; thus revealing no mental spatial representation. However, failure to find training effects highlights the flexibility of weaker spatial representations, and supports research demonstrating spatial representation flexibility.

Action consequences affect the space-time congruency effect on reaction time

According to the metaphoric mapping hypothesis, people code time in terms of space. Consistent with this hypothesis, several reaction time studies have demonstrated that participants respond faster with a left (right) response to stimuli that convey temporal information about the past (future) than when this stimulus-response mapping is reversed (past → right, future → left). The present experiment examines whether the side of the response key or of the (visual) action effect elicited by the response is the crucial factor of this space-time congruency effect. In a response-effect (R-E) compatible group, a response to a temporal stimulus produced a visual action effect on the same side as the response location (left response → left action effect, right response → right action effect). In an R-E incompatible group, however, response and action effect occurred on opposite sides (left response → right action effect, right response → left action effect). A typical space-time congruency effect was obtained in the R-E compatible group, but the congruency effect interacted with group and was descriptively reversed in the R-E incompatible group. This result pattern suggests that the typical congruency effect is determined by the location of the action consequences rather than the location of the response key. Based on this result, we suggest that the space-time congruency effect is based on an abstract spatial mental representation that embraces action events in the external space.