Spatial Arrangement Of Items Research Articles

Perceptual Grouping Affects Haptic Enumeration Over the Fingers.

Spatial arrangement is known to influence enumeration times in vision. In haptic enumeration, it has been shown that dividing the total number of items over the two hands can speed up enumeration. Here we investigated how spatial arrangement of items and non-items presented to the individual fingers impacts enumeration times. More specifically, we tested whether grouping by proximity facilitates haptic serial enumeration (counting). Participants were asked to report the number of tangible items, amongst non-items, presented to the finger pads of both hands. In the first experiment, we divided the tangible items in one, two, or three groups that were defined by proximity (i.e., one nonitem in between two groups) and found that number of groups and not number of items were the critical factor in enumeration times. In a second experiment, we found that this grouping even takes place when groups extend across fingers of both hands. These results suggest that grouping by proximity affects haptic serial enumeration and that this grouping takes place on a spatial level possibly in addition to the somatotopic level. Our results support the idea that grouping by proximity, a principle introduced in vision, also greatly affects haptic processing of spatial information.

Homing behaviour of juvenile Australian raspy crickets (Orthoptera: Gryllacrididae)

Abstract. Juvenile gryllacridid Orthoptera, known as raspy crickets, build nests or burrows as soon as they hatch. Both juveniles and adults are central place foragers that search for food at night and return to the same nest each morning. This study examines the homing abilities of juveniles of an undescribed species of gryllacridid from Western Australia. Juveniles were placed in a simple maze, which consisted of two chambers, one containing the nest and the other empty, linked by wide glass tubes to a central chamber containing food. The food was placed in this chamber with a consistent orientation relative to the exit tubes leading to the nest and empty chambers. Juveniles appeared to learn which chamber contained their nest and thereafter ignored the route towards the empty chamber. By exchanging the connecting glass tubes, it could be established that juvenile crickets were not using chemical trails to find their home. The positions of the empty and nest chambers with respect to the central chamber were exchanged and, in a separate manipulation, the spatial configuration of the food in the central chamber was also changed. Both manipulations resulted in a decrease in successful returns to the nest chamber, the former because the nest had been relocated, the latter presumably because the spatial arrangement of items within the food chamber now presented orientation cues, which led to the empty chamber. Furthermore, juveniles were able to estimate distance travelled, despite the absence of chemical or visual cues. Juvenile raspy crickets appear to be able to maintain nest fidelity from a very early age by using spatial landmarks and appear capable of measuring translational displacement intrinsically.

Spatial context and top-down strategies in visual search

Marvin M. Chun and Yuhong Jiang (1998) investigated the role of spatial context on visual search. They used two display conditions. In the Old Display condition, the spatial arrangement of items in the search display was kept constant throughout the experiment. In the New Display condition, the spatial arrangement of items was always novel from trial to trial. The results showed better performance with Old Displays than with New Displays. The authors proposed that repeated spatial context help guiding attention to the target location, thus they termed this effect Contextual Cueing. We present three attempts to reproduce this effect. Experiments 1 and 2 were near exact replications of experiments in Chun and Jiang's report, where we failed to obtain Contextual Cueing. Post-experimental interviews revealed that participants used different search strategies when performing the task: an 'active' strategy (an active effort to find the target), or a 'passive' strategy (intuitive search). In Experiment 3, we manipulated task instructions to bias participants into using active or passive strategies. A robust Contextual Cueing Effect was obtained only in the passive instruction condition.

Effects of spatial arrangement on 4- and 6-yr.-old children's memory.

This research is an investigation of the effects of different spatial arrangements of the same items on 4- and 6-yr.-old children's memory. The items were arranged in one of three ways, put in a random order, grouped into categories, or displayed in a configuration reproducing a real-world scene. Each subject was asked both to recall the items verbally and to remember their spatial locations. The results show that only 6-yr.-olds' memory for locations is enhanced by meaningful arrangements of objects in space. It is suggested that there is a developmental gap between memory for "raw" spatial relationships ("locational" cognitive mapping) and memory for spatial relationships which also takes into account the meaning of these relations ("relational" cognitive mapping). Furthermore, for 6-yr.-olds clustering of recall is categorically organized in all conditions. For 4-yr.-olds such clustering appears to reproduce the spatial arrangement of items in a scene, while recall is categorically organized in both categorical and random conditions.

Information Search by Preschool Children: Induced Use of Categories and Category Hierarchies

NELSON, KEITH E., and EARL, NANCY. Information Search by Preschool Children: Induced Use of Categories and Category Hierarchies. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1973, 44, 682-685. Previous studies have shown that 4to 6-year-olds in information-seeking games like 20 seldom sift alternatives through the use of questions referring to categories. Pretest results for nursery school children in the present study matched these findings. Following pretest trials, a category-induction manipulation focused attention on categories through discussion and through spatial arrangement of items. This manipulation induced children's use of category questions. It was argued that children spontaneously failed to employ task-relevant conceptual abilities because they did not consider spontaneously that their conceptual abilities could serve as efficient means toward problem solution.