Sense Of Direction Research Articles

Individual Differences in Route-Learning Strategy and Associated Working Memory Resources

The current investigation examined individual differences in route-learning strategies and their relative demands on visuospatial versus verbal working memory (WM) resources in virtual environments. Learning new routes is a resource-demanding activity that must often be carried out in conjunction with other concurrent tasks. Virtual environments (VEs) are increasingly being used for training and research, pointing to the importance of determining the strategies people use to learn routes in these environments. Participants classified as having good or poor sense of direction (SOD) attempted to learn novel routes while concurrently performing either a verbal (articulatory suppression) or a visuospatial (tapping) WM interference task. Different navigational strategies were observed in each SOD group. Individuals with poor SOD relied more heavily on verbal rather than visuospatial WM resources, as evidenced by greater disruption to route-learning performance from the articulatory suppression task relative to the tapping task. Conversely, individuals with good SOD exhibited more route-learning disruption from the tapping task, suggesting a greater reliance on visuospatial WM resources. Individuals differ from one another in the strategies they use and the WM resources they tap--verbal or visuospatial--to learn routes in VEs. Self-report measures can be used as indices of such individual differences in navigational strategy use in VE tasks. Assessing SOD and associated WM resources have implications for targeted training for navigation in VEs and for the design of in-vehicle navigation systems.

A sense of direction

A sense of direction

Joseph Tabbi Answers R M Berry

Berry continuedfrom previous page It is this metaphor of a culture as a delimited space that connects in ultimately fatalistic fashion Rob's search for a cultural alternative with Frank's enactment of a sexist, racist plot. My aim in writing Frank was to disclose the violence ofthis metaphor, and my hope was that, if any reader ever saw what I saw, he or she would also see freedom literally materializing from the novel's first words. I have nothing to say on the question of whether or not Frank succeeds in its aim. but I will say that, if George Bush ever tries to tell us he simply didn't know the Iraqis would resist Westernization so fiercely, no one should believe him. This isn't what a lack of knowledge looks like. Even if Victor Frankenstein had read Mary Shelley's novel, he would've done exactly as he did. R M Berry is also the author of Dictionary ofModern Anguish and Leonardo's Horse (both FC2). Joseph Tabbi Answers R M Berry If I were to choose among the theoretical alternatives R M Berry sets out in response to my review, I'd go with Wittgenstein: in a culture that insists on endless accumulation and perpetual change, there's solace in Wittgenstein's insistence that "philosophy leaves everything as it is." I can appreciate, also, the appearance right now of so many novelists who want to rewrite, or "unwrite," classic fictions, to escape the past by repeating it (or, really, by acknowledging it completely, letting it have its way). Wittgenstein is important to Berry's project because the philosopher , not aspiring to add something new to the store of knowledge, instead reorganizes knowledge and (like a novelist) makes the familiar world seem strange, "untamed," less literate, and, in a way, more literal. That's a stringent ground for a literary practice , perhaps a rougher foundation than most novel readers want, but more satisfying than the claims I keep hearing from small and alternative presses that literary authors and "outsider" artists are somehow politically subversive, that they possess some special knowledge or unique "voice" other than the voices that reach every one of us every day via multiple media. The only special knowledge a literary author can have is knowledge of literature, and so I accept Berry's characterization of a circularity in my argument —that novelists do well by attending to the lived reality that their own activity is. And critics, too. Reflexivity in literature, though, does not mean a separation from the social or political world, and solidarity, though desirable, does not need to be the solidarity of mass culture. Group identity doesn't have to promote group-think along racial, gendered, or nationalist lines, not when the identity that writers do share, generally, comes in the first place from membership in (or aspiration to) the professional classes that maintain the current world-system. Wallerstein, no less than Wittgenstein, should be required reading in literary seminars and writing workshops because the loss of an "outside" and the appearance of new constraints on creativity are not exclusively philosophical propositions. (See Immanuel Wallerstein, World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction |2004J.) Rather, the discovery ofa "surprising ," "untamed," literal, and worldly presence is happening everywhere, equally among scientists, artists, novelists, military strategists, and politicians. In various ways, commentators in each field have been arriving at a common realization that the material world is itself more creative and communicative than we might have thought. Involution, rather than outright resistance, could be a more effective way ofbringing about changes; there's no reason to perpetuate a modernist compulsion to innovate, endlessly and mindlessly. As a critic, I'm not trying to legitimate some knowledge of my own apart from the works I'm writing about. Rather, my purpose is to discern a commonality and a sense ofdirection in a number of contemporary currents ofthought. I'm not very interested in narratives, fictive or otherwise, that proclaim their political resistance or outcast status, not when there are so many material transformations going on in so many different fields, from the cognitive and ecological sciences to the integration of literary arts in electronic environments. If...

Allocentric-heading recall and its relation to self-reported sense-of-direction.

A sense of direction (SOD) computes the body's facing direction relative to a reference frame grounded in the environment. The authors report on three experiments in which they used a heading-recall task to tap the functioning of a SOD system and then correlated task performance with self-reported SOD as a convergent test of the task's construct validity. On each heading-recall trial, the participant judged the photographer's allocentric heading when photographing a pictured outdoor scene. Participants were tested over the full range of SOD ratings in Experiment 1, and in Experiments 2 and 3 heading-recall at the SOD extremes was tested. In all experiments, there was wide variability in heading-recall accuracy that covaried with self-rated SOD. Parametric manipulation of various task parameters revealed some likely functional properties of the SOD system. The results support the psychological reality of a SOD system and further indicate that there are large individual differences in the efficacy with which the system functions.

Developing a sense of direction

Developing a sense of direction

A Sense of Direction

A Sense of Direction

A Sense of Direction

A Sense of Direction

Development of a self-report measure of environmental spatial ability

Environmental spatial abilities are involved in everyday tasks such as finding one's way in the environment and learning the layout of a new environment. Self-report measures of environmental abilities, e.g., asking people to rate their “sense of direction (SOD),” have been found to predict objective measures of these abilities quite highly. In this study, we developed a standardized self-report scale of environmental spatial ability, the Santa Barbara Sense of Direction Scale (SBSOD). The scale proved to be internally consistent and had good test–retest reliability. A series of four validity studies examined its relation to measures of spatial updating and acquisition of spatial knowledge at different scales and acquired from different learning experiences. These studies suggested that the SBSOD is related to tasks that require one to update location in space as a result of self-motion. It is more highly correlated with tests of spatial knowledge that involve orienting oneself within the environment than with tests that involve estimating distances or drawing maps. Self-report SOD is also somewhat more highly correlated with measures of spatial knowledge acquired from direct experience in the environment than with measures of knowledge acquired from maps, video, or virtual environments (VE).

A Sense of Direction

A Sense of Direction

A sense of direction

A sense of direction

THE RELATIONS AMONG WAYFINDING STRATEGY USE, SENSE OF DIRECTION, SEX, FAMILIARITY, AND WAYFINDING ABILITY

Wayfinding ability was studied in reference to sense of direction (SOD), familiarity with the environment, reported wayfinding strategy use, and sex. A questionnaire, administered to 196 psychology undergraduates, included a SOD scale, a wayfinding strategy scale that measures use of survey and route navigation strategies, and questions regarding familiarity with the environment. Of these students, 94 also completed a mental wayfinding task in which directions for a route from one location on the campus to another were read and mentally followed. At the final location of the route, participants identified the direction of origin of the route. Regression analyses revealed that response latency was predicted by SOD and accuracy was predicted by sex and familiarity.

Slovakia: The End to a Confused Sense of Direction?

Slovakia: The End to a Confused Sense of Direction?

加齢と方向感

加齢と方向感

両側人工内耳装用者の方向感検査

両側人工内耳装用者の方向感検査

視覚障害者の方向感について

視覚障害者の方向感について

加齢と方向感

加齢と方向感

Preserving a sense of direction

Preserving a sense of direction

A sense of direction

A sense of direction

Birds' sense of direction

Avian Orientation and Navigation. By K. Schmidt-Koenig. Pp.180. (Academic: London and New York, 1979.) £13.80, $32.

Sense of direction?

Sense of direction?