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Fixed versus dynamic orientations in environmental learning from ground-level and aerial perspectives

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Abstract

Ground-level and aerial perspectives in virtual space provide simplified conditions for investigating differences between exploratory navigation and map reading in large-scale environmental learning. General similarities and differences in ground-level and aerial encoding have been identified, but little is known about the specific characteristics that differentiate them. One such characteristic is the need to process orientation; ground-level encoding (and navigation) typically requires dynamic orientations, whereas aerial encoding (and map reading) is typically conducted in a fixed orientation. The present study investigated how this factor affected spatial processing by comparing ground-level and aerial encoding to a hybrid condition: aerial-with-turns. Experiment 1 demonstrated that scene recognition was sensitive to both perspective (ground-level or aerial) and orientation (dynamic or fixed). Experiment 2 investigated brain activation during encoding, revealing regions that were preferentially activated perspective as in previous studies (Shelton and Gabrieli in J Neurosci 22:2711–2717, 2002), but also identifying regions that were preferentially activated as a function of the presence or absence of turns. Together, these results differentiated the behavioral and brain consequences attributable to changes in orientation from those attributable to other characteristics of ground-level and aerial perspectives, providing leverage on how orientation information is processed in everyday spatial learning.

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Notes

  1. These paradigms have all used desktop virtual reality (VR) rather than immersive VR for several practical reasons. On-going investigations continue to assess the similarities among desktop VR, immersive VR, and real space, but there has been general support for enough similarity to warrant the use of both types of VR (Montello, Waller, Hegarty, & Richardson, 2004; Ruddle, Payne, & Jones, 1997). However, as with any laboratory study intended to bear on real-world conditions, these paradigms still require caution in overextending the conclusions that can be drawn.

  2. Table 3 of Shelton and Gabrieli (2002) lists 18 different clusters. However, in identifying bilateral ROIs, two of the right parietal clusters corresponded to a single left parietal cluster. The activation patterns in these two ROIs were identical in the original data, so they were combined for the present purposes.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Dana Clark and Megan Carr for assistance with data collection and coding. We also thank Marci Flanery and Naohide Yamamoto for comments on the work.

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  1. Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, Ames Hall/3400 N. Charles Street, Baltimore, MD, 21218, USA

    Amy L. Shelton & Holly A. Pippitt

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  1. Amy L. Shelton
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  2. Holly A. Pippitt
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Correspondence to Amy L. Shelton.

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Shelton, A.L., Pippitt, H.A. Fixed versus dynamic orientations in environmental learning from ground-level and aerial perspectives. Psychological Research 71, 333–346 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-006-0088-9

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