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Developing global spatial memory by navigation in multiscale environments
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- Author / Creator
- Lei, Xuehui
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Spatial navigation updates people’s self-location (heading and position) and meanwhile develops spatial memory. Environments in real life are often multiscale environments, which contain a number of individual spaces separated by boundaries. People primarily rely on visual cues (piloting) to develop local representations for individual spaces and rely on self-motion cues (path integration) to develop global representations for spatial relations between locations in different individual spaces. Previous studies have shown difficulty in updating self-location globally and developing global representations (e.g., Lei, Mou, & Zhang, 2020; Lei & Mou, under review; Marchette, Marchette, Vass, Ryan, & Epstein, 2014). In the current dissertation, two studies were conducted using immersive virtual reality to investigate the function of across-boundary navigation in developing global representations.
The study in Chapter 2 examined the development of global representations after one-shot across-boundary walking between two square rooms. There were six experiments in this study, which manipulated factors that might affect the encoding and retrieval of global spatial relations. Yet, regardless of these manipulations, all the six experiments showed that the participants updated their headings based on global relations between the rooms. These results in Chapter 2 demonstrated that people can update their self-location globally and develop global representations after one-shot across-boundary walking between two rooms. The encoding and retrieval of global representations developed by path integration may be automatic.
The study in Chapter 3 examined the influence of visual structural similarity in developing global representations after one-shot across-boundary walking. The two rooms in this study were rectangular but were globally misaligned so that updating self-location relative to local structures would conflict with updating self-location relative to global relations. The results from three experiments showed that the participants only updated their self-location locally, however, updating self-location globally could occur if the global representations were successfully activated. These results in Chapter 3 demonstrated that local structural similarity interferes with developing global representations and updating self-location globally, and this interference occurs during activation of global representations.
Overall, the current dissertation has provided evidence that path integration develops global representations after one-shot walking across boundaries in a novel multiscale environment with two rooms, but the visual similarity of structures in local spaces exerts strong interference in this process. -
- Graduation date
- Fall 2020
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- Type of Item
- Thesis
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- Degree
- Doctor of Philosophy
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- License
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