Verbal cues flexibly transform spatial representations in human memory.

ABSTRACT: Humans possess a unique ability to communicate spatially-relevant information, yet the intersection between language and navigation remains largely unexplored. One possibility is that verbal cues accentuate heuristics useful for coding spatial layouts, yet this idea remains largely untested. We test the idea that verbal cues flexibly accentuate the coding of heuristics to remember spatial layouts via spatial boundaries or landmarks. The alternative hypothesis instead conceives of encoding during navigation as a step-wise process involving binding lower-level features, and thus subsequently formed spatial representations should not be modified by verbal cues. Across three experiments, we found that verbal cues significantly affected pointing error patterns at axes that were aligned with the

SUBMITTER: Peacock CE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6361694 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature