when do objects become landmarks a vr study of the effect of task relevance on spatial memory什么时候成为地标性建筑虚拟现实研究对象在空间记忆任务相关性的影响.pdfVIP

When Do Objects Become Landmarks? A VR Study of the Effect of Task Relevance on Spatial Memory 1 2 3 4 Xue Han , Patrick Byrne , Michael Kahana , Suzanna Becker * 1 Department of Psychology, Neuroscience and Behaviour, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, 2 Centre for Vision Research, York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 3 Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States of America, 4 Department of Psychology, Neuroscience and Behaviour, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada Abstract We investigated how objects come to serve as landmarks in spatial memory, and more specifically how they form part of an allocentric cognitive map. Participants performing a virtual driving task incidentally learned the layout of a virtual town and locations of objects in that town. They were subsequently tested on their spatial and recognition memory for the objects. To assess whether the objects were encoded allocentrically we examined pointing consistency across tested viewpoints. In three experiments, we found that spatial memory for objects at navigationally relevant locations was more consistent across tested viewpoints, particularly when participants had more limited experience of the environment. When participants’ attention was focused on the appearance of objects, the navigational relevance effect was eliminated, whereas when their attention was focused on objects’ locations, this effect was enhanced, supporting the hypothesis that when objects are processed in the service of navigation, rather than merely being viewed as objects, they engage qualitatively distinct attentional systems and are incorporated into an allocentric spatial representation. The results are consisten