Where do I go from here?: Spatial navigation strategy and disorientation when switching environments

Resumen

Deciding which way to turn when exiting a building requires one to be oriented with respect to the wider environment, but it remains unclear how spatial representations are updated to facilitate the switch from one space to another. Here, we consider two strategies: (1) egocentric: environmental locations are self-referenced; and (2) allocentric: positional information referenced to external cues. Participants viewed a walkthrough a 3D rendered city street intermediately entering and exiting an indoor space. We manipulated complexity of the indoor path to induce low or high disorientation, and mirror-reversed the street view in half the trials to dissociate between the strategies. Upon return, participants chose a turn as to continue in the tasked direction, and verified chosen direction after viewing the street end. The results showed that the street view was initially disregarded, suggesting a preference for the egocentric strategy in directional choices. However, responses were corrected based on the subsequent view, indicating a shift towards adherence to the allocentric strategy. The pattern of results also points to a directional conflict between egocentric and allocentric representations. Thus, although both strategies were engaged when switching environments, their implementation was largely asynchronous: egocentric dominated early and allocentric dominated subsequent control of navigation.

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Cómo citar (APA 7)

Krzys, K., Francuz, P., & Castelhano, M. S. (2023). Where do I go from here?: Spatial navigation strategy and disorientation when switching environments. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/c8jp2