Finding Home: Landmark Ambiguity in Human Navigation.

ABSTRACT: Memories of places often include landmark cues, i.e., information provided by the spatial arrangement of distinct objects with respect to the target location. To study how humans combine landmark information for navigation, we conducted two experiments: To this end, participants were either provided with auditory landmarks while walking in a large sports hall or with visual landmarks while walking on a virtual-reality treadmill setup. We found that participants cannot reliably locate their home position due to ambiguities in the spatial arrangement when only one or two uniform landmarks provide cues with respect to the target. With three visual landmarks that look alike, the task is solved without ambiguity, while audio landmarks need to play three unique sounds for a similar performance.

SUBMITTER: Jetzschke S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5513971 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature