Remembered landmarks enhance the precision of path integration

• Main Authors: Shannon O´Leary, John W. Philbeck
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Sciendo 2005-01-01
• Series: Psicológica
• Online Access: http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=16926102

When navigating by path integration, knowledge of ones position becomes
 increasingly uncertain as one walks from a known location. This
 uncertainty decreases if one perceives a known landmark location nearby.
 We hypothesized that remembering landmarks might serve a similar purpose
 for path integration as directly perceiving them. If this is true, walking near
 a remembered landmark location should enhance response consistency in
 path integration tasks. To test this, we asked participants to view a target
 and then attempt to walk to it without vision. Some participants saw the
 target plus a landmark during the preview. Compared with no-landmark
 trials, response consistency nearly doubled when participants passed near the
 remembered landmark location. Similar results were obtained when
 participants could audibly perceive the landmark while walking. A control
 experiment ruled out perceptual context effects during the preview. We
 conclude that remembered landmarks can enhance path integration even
 though they are not directly perceived.