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Path integration (PI) is a navigation process that allows an organism to update its current location in reference to a starting point. PI can involve updating self-position continuously with respect to the starting point (continuous updating) or creating a map representation of the route which is then used to compute the homing vector (configural updating). One of the brain areas involved in PI, the entorhinal cortex, is modulated similarly by whole-body and eye movements, suggesting that if PI updates self-position, an analogous process may be used to update gaze position, and may undergo age-related changes. Here, we created an eyetracking version of a PI task in which younger and older participants followed routes with their eyes as guided by visual onsets; at the end of each route, participants were cued to return to the starting point or another enroute location. When only memory for the starting location was required for successful task performance, younger and older adults were generally not influenced by the number of locations, indicative of continuous updating. However, when participants could be cued to any enroute location, thereby requiring memory for the entire route, processing times increased, accuracy decreased, and overt revisits to enroute locations increased with the number of locations in a route, indicative of configural updating. Older participants showed evidence for similar updating strategies as younger participants, but they were less accurate and made more overt revisits to mid-route locations. These findings suggest that spatial updating mechanisms are generalizable across effector systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We explore systems of spatial deictic words (such as 'here' and 'there') from the perspective of communicative efficiency using typological data from over 200 languages Nintemann et al. (2020). We argue from an information-theoretic perspective that spatial deictic systems balance informativity and complexity in the sense of the Information Bottleneck (Zaslavsky et al., (2018). We find that under an appropriate choice of cost function and need probability over meanings, among all the 21,146 theoretically possible spatial deictic systems, those adopted by real languages lie near an efficient frontier of informativity and complexity. Moreover, we find that the conditions that the need probability and the cost function need to satisfy for this result are consistent with the cognitive science literature on spatial cognition, especially regarding the source–goal asymmetry. We further show that the typological data are better explained by introducing a notion of consistency into the Information Bottleneck framework, which is jointly optimized along with informativity and complexity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a series of five experiments with unimanual Go/No-Go tasks and intermixed Arabic numerical, i.e. numbers lower or higher than 5, and directional targets, i.e. arrows pointing to the left or to the right, we explored whether spatial codes used in isolation inherently evoke the left-to-right representation of number magnitudes, i.e. Space-to-Number congruency effect, and, vice-versa, whether number-magnitude codes used in isolation inherently evoke the conceptual activation of left/right spatial codes, i.e. Number-to-Space congruency effect. In Experiment 1 Go responses were provided based on instructions that activated only magnitude codes, e.g. "push only if the number is lower than 5 and whenever an arrow appears", or only spatial codes, e.g. "push only when an arrow points to the left and whenever a number appears". In Experiments 2-4, the same instructions were combined with the request of responding only to arrows in a specific colour. No fixed association was present between a specific arrow colour and a specific arrow direction. In Experiment 3, the direction of arrow-targets was kept fixed to favour the processing of arrow direction. In Experiment 4, an additional class of No-Go visual stimuli was included to heighten the focus of attention on numerical and directional arrow-targets and, in addition, only numbers 1, 2, 8 and 9 were used to force the contrast between small and large magnitude codes. The results of Experiments 1-4 highlighted no significant or reliable Space-to-Number congruency effect, e.g. faster RTs to numbers lower than 5 when participants attend to arrows pointing to the left, or Number-to-Space congruency effect, e.g. faster RTs to arrows pointing to the left when participants attend to numbers lower than 5. In Experiment 5 we confirmed that when spatial and number magnitude codes are used in conjunction, e.g. " push only when an arrow points left and when a number is lower than 5", a significant Space-to-Number congruency effect is found and we expanded this evidence to Number-to-Space congruency. Split-half testing showed that in Experiment 5 congruency effects were reliable and null-hypothesis significance testing showed that they were different from those found in all other experiments. We conclude that neither space codes used in isolation can elicit a spatial representation of number magnitudes nor number-magnitude codes used in isolation can trigger the activation of spatial codes. Thus, spatial and numerical codes must be used jointly to evoke reliable spatially organised mental number lines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In three experiments (N = 288), we examined how the direction of the scale translation impacts how 4- to 5-year-old children and adults visually scale distance from memory. Participants first watched an experimenter place an object on a learning mat and then attempted to place a replica object on a test mat that was either identical (no scaling task) or different in scale (scaling task). In Experiment 1, both children and adults had difficulty scaling up from 16 to 128 in. (1:8 scaling ratio) but not scaling down from 128 to 16 in. (8:1 scaling ratio), suggesting that scaling up was harder than scaling down. In Experiment 2, we reduced the scaling ratio from 1:8 to 1:2 and found that children and adults had no difficulty scaling up from 16 to 32 in. or scaling down from 32 to 16 in.. In Experiment 3, we kept the scale ratio the same (1:2) but increased the size of the test mat and found that participants had difficulty with both scaling up from 32 to 64 in. and scaling down from 128 to 64 in.. We conclude that scaling up is not harder than scaling down. Rather, visually scaling distance is more difficult when participants cannot view both edges of the test mat simultaneously while making the scale translation. Across all experiments, 4- to 5-year-olds were less accurate than adults in their placements overall, but they exhibited the same patterns of performance on the scaling and no scaling tasks, suggesting that visual scaling processes are age-independent. The General Discussion focuses on how visual scaling emerges from a complex interplay of cognitive processes and visual constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Learning through physical action with mathematical manipulatives is an effective way to help children acquire new ideas and concepts. Gesture is a type of physical action, but it differs from other kinds of actions in that it does not involve interacting directly with external objects. As such, gesture provides an interesting comparison to action-on-objects and allows us to identify the circumstances under which gesture versus interaction with objects (and the associated effects on the external world) may be differentially beneficial to learning. In the current study, we ask whether individual differences in first grade children's prior knowledge about a foundational mathematical concept - their understanding of linear units of measure - might interact with their ability to glean insight from action- and gesture-based instruction. We find that the children using a more rudimentary pretest strategy did not benefit from producing gestures at all, but did benefit from producing actions. In contrast, children using a more conceptually advanced, though still incorrect, strategy at pretest learned from both actions and gestures. This interaction between conceptual knowledge and movement type (action or gesture) emphasizes the importance of considering individual differences in children's prior knowledge when assessing the efficacy of movement-based instruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Imagined perspective switches are notoriously difficult, a fact often ascribed to sensorimotor interference between one's to-be-imagined versus actual orientation. Here, we demonstrate similar interference effects, even if participants know they are in a remote environment with unknown spatial relation to the learning environment. Participants learned 15 target objects irregularly arranged in an office from one orientation (0°, 120°, or 240°). Participants were blindfolded and disoriented before being wheeled to a test room of similar geometry (exp.1) or different geometry (exp.2). Participants were seated facing 0, 120°, or 240°, and asked to perform judgments of relative direction (JRD, e.g., imagine facing "pen", point to "phone"). JRD performance was improved when participants' to-be-imagined orientation in the learning room was aligned with their physical orientation in the current (test) room. Conversely, misalignment led to sensorimotor interference. These concurrent reference frame facilitation/interference effects were further enhanced when the current and to-be-imagined environments were more similar. Whereas sensorimotor alignment improved absolute and relative pointing accuracy, sensorimotor misalignment predominately increased response times, supposedly due to increased cognitive demands. These sensorimotor facilitation/interference effects were sustained and could not be sufficiently explained by initial retrieval and transformation costs. We propose that facilitation/interference effects occurred between concurrent egocentric representations of the learning and test environment in working memory. Results suggest that merely being in a rectangular room might be sufficient to automatically re-anchor one's representation and thus produce orientation-specific interference. This should be considered when designing perspective-taking experiments to avoid unintended biases and concurrent reference frame alignment effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Humans and other animals build up spatial knowledge of the environment on the basis of visual information and path integration. We compare three hypotheses about the geometry of this knowledge of navigation space: (a) 'cognitive map' with metric Euclidean structure and a consistent coordinate system, (b) 'topological graph' or network of paths between places, and (c) 'labelled graph' incorporating local metric information about path lengths and junction angles. In two experiments, participants walked in a non-Euclidean environment, a virtual hedge maze containing two 'wormholes' that visually rotated and teleported them between locations. During training, they learned the metric locations of eight target objects from a 'home' location, which were visible individually. During testing, shorter wormhole routes to a target were preferred, and novel shortcuts were directional, contrary to the topological hypothesis. Shortcuts were strongly biased by the wormholes, with mean constant errors of 37° and 41° (45° expected), revealing violations of the metric postulates in spatial knowledge. In addition, shortcuts to targets near wormholes shifted relative to flanking targets, revealing 'rips' (86% of cases), 'folds' (91%), and ordinal reversals (66%) in spatial knowledge. Moreover, participants were completely unaware of these geometric inconsistencies, reflecting a surprising insensitivity to Euclidean structure. The probability of the shortcut data under the Euclidean map model and labelled graph model indicated decisive support for the latter (BFGM>100). We conclude that knowledge of navigation space is best characterized by a labelled graph, in which local metric information is approximate, geometrically inconsistent, and not embedded in a common coordinate system. This class of 'cognitive graph' models supports route finding, novel detours, and rough shortcuts, and has the potential to unify a range of data on spatial navigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The prepositions in and on appear early in children's descriptions of simple containment and support relations, such as "apple in the bowl" and "cup on the table". However, mature use of these basic terms extends across a very broad range of object configurations, raising the question of whether children and adults share the same underlying semantic space, and if so, how children's use of in and on comes to match that of adults. With a new battery containing diverse object configurations, we asked how 4 and 6 year-olds and adults distribute basic spatial expressions (isin, is on) and lexical verbs (hang, attach, etc.) across subtypes of containment and support. Our results reveal probabilistic distributions of in and on in both adult and child language, with similar distributions among adults and children for in but different patterns for on. Moreover, we find substantial differences in the use of lexical verbs across the two spatial domains and across ages. We propose that children and adults share a structured semantic space for both containment and support relations, but larger portions of this space are described by in and on early in development because alternative descriptions employing lexical verbs are inhibited. Using computational modeling along with experimental data, we link developmental changes in the scope of basic spatial expressions to increasing use of lexical verbs in parts of the space that reflect less central relations of containment or support. This result supports a nuanced view of spatial language acquisition that shifts the focus from how children learn basic expressions to how they learn to distribute expressions of varying content and complexity across the semantic space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ability to imagine ourselves in the past, in the future or in different spatial locations suggests that the brain can generate cognitive maps that are independent of the experiential self in the here and now. Using three experiments, we asked to which extent Mental Time Travel (MTT; imagining the self in time) and Mental Space Navigation (MSN; imagining the self in space) shared similar cognitive operations. For this, participants judged the ordinality of real historical events in time and in space with respect to different mental perspectives: for instance, participants mentally projected themselves in Paris in nine years, and judged whether an event occurred before or after, or, east or west, of where they mentally stood. In all three experiments, symbolic distance effects in time and space dimensions were quantified using Reaction Times (RT) and Error Rates (ER). When self-projected, participants were slower and were less accurate (absolute distance effects); participants were also faster and more accurate when the spatial and temporal distances were further away from their mental viewpoint (relative distance effects). These effects show that MTT and MSN require egocentric mapping and that self-projection requires map transformations. Additionally, participants' performance was affected when self-projection was made in one dimension but judgements in another, revealing a competition between temporal and spatial mapping (Experiment 2 & 3). Altogether, our findings suggest that MTT and MSN are separately mapped although they require comparable allo- to ego-centric map conversion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human languages may be more than completely arbitrary symbolic systems. A growing literature supports sound symbolism, or the existence of consistent, intuitive relationships between speech sounds and specific concepts. Prior work establishes that these sound-to-meaning mappings can shape language-related judgments and decisions, but do their effects generalize beyond merely the linguistic and truly color how we navigate our environment? We examine this possibility, relating a predominant sound symbolic distinction (vowel frontness) to a novel associate (spatial proximity) in five studies. We show that changing one vowel in a label can influence estimations of distance, impacting judgment, perception, and action. The results (1) provide the first experimental support for a relationship between vowels and spatial distance and (2) demonstrate that sound-to-meaning mappings have outcomes that extend beyond just language and can - through a single sound - influence how we perceive and behave toward objects in the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The factors that contribute to perceptual simulation during sentence comprehension remain underexplored. Extant research on perspective taking in language has largely focused on linguistic constraints, such as the role of pronouns in guiding perspective adoption. In the present study, we identify preferential usage of egocentric and allocentric reference frames in individuals, and test the two groups on a standard sentence-picture verification task. Across three experiments, we show that individual biases in spatial reference frame adoption observed in non-linguistic tasks influence visual simulation of perspective in language. Our findings suggest that typically reported grand-averaged effects may obscure important between-subject differences, and support proposals arguing for representational pluralism, where perceptual information is integrated dynamically and in a way that is sensitive to contextual and especially individual constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research exploring visual attention has demonstrated that people are aware of only a small proportion of visual properties, and that people only track these properties over a subset of moments in time. This makes it critical to understand how our perceptual system leverages its limited capacity, such that properties are tracked across views only when they can support an understanding of meaningful events. In this paper, we propose that relational triggers induce between-view property comparisons when spatial relationships between objects appear inconsistent across views-moments that are particularly likely to mark the beginning of meaningful events. In these experiments, we activate relational triggers by violating heuristics that filmmakers use to create visuospatial continuity across views. We find that these violations increase change detection when they coincide with visual property changes, demonstrating that relational triggers induce a comparison of properties held in working memory. We also demonstrate that relational triggers increase the likelihood of event segmentation, and that change detection increases both in response to triggers and natural event boundaries. We propose that relational triggers are an effective heuristic cue that facilitates the comparison of properties when they are likely to be useful during event perception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies suggest that associations between numbers and space are mediated by shifts of visuospatial attention along the horizontal axis. In this study, we investigated the effect of vertical shifts of overt attention, induced by optokinetic stimulation (OKS) and monitored through eye-tracking, in two tasks requiring explicit (number comparison) or implicit (parity judgment) processing of number magnitude. Participants were exposed to black-and-white stripes (OKS) that moved vertically (upward or downward) or remained static (control condition). During the OKS, participants were asked to verbally classify auditory one-digit numbers as larger/smaller than 5 (comparison task; Exp. 1) or as odd/even (parity task; Exp. 2). OKS modulated response times in both experiments. In Exp.1, upward attentional displacement decreased the Magnitude effect (slower responses for large numbers) and increased the Distance effect (slower responses for numbers close to the reference). In Exp.2, we observed a complex interaction between parity, magnitude, and OKS, indicating that downward attentional displacement slowed down responses for large odd numbers. Moreover, eye tracking analyses revealed an influence of number processing on eye movements both in Exp. 1, with eye gaze shifting downwards during the processing of small numbers as compared to large ones; and in Exp. 2, with leftward shifts after large even numbers (6,8) and rightward shifts after large odd numbers (7,9). These results provide evidence of bidirectional links between number and space and extend them to the vertical dimension. Moreover, they document the influence of visuo-spatial attention on processing of numerical magnitude, numerical distance, and parity. Together, our findings are in line with grounded and embodied accounts of numerical cognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] We examine location memory biases in a 3D, vista-level campus environment. [•] We use a novel extension of the location memory paradigm for testing in 3D space. [•] Participants’ memory for locations was biased toward central (prototypical) values. [•] Bias was greater with longer retention intervals. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Does spatial language influence how people think about space? To address this question, we observed children who did not know a conventional language, and tested their performance on nonlinguistic spatial tasks. We studied deaf children living in Istanbul whose hearing losses prevented them from acquiring speech and whose hearing parents had not exposed them to sign. Lacking a conventional language, the children used gestures, called homesigns, to communicate. In Study 1, we asked whether homesigners used gesture to convey spatial relations, and found that they did not. In Study 2, we tested a new group of homesigners on a Spatial Mapping Task, and found that they performed significantly worse than hearing Turkish children who were matched to the deaf children on another cognitive task. The absence of spatial language thus went hand-in-hand with poor performance on the nonlinguistic spatial task, pointing to the importance of spatial language in thinking about space. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The body specificity hypothesis () posits that the way in which people interact with the world affects their mental representation of information. For instance, right- versus left-handedness affects the mental representation of affective valence, with right-handers categorically associating good with rightward areas and bad with leftward areas, and left-handers doing the opposite. In two experiments we test whether this hypothesis can: extend to spatial memory, be measured in a continuous manner, be predicted by extent of handedness, and how the application of such a heuristic might vary as a function of informational specificity. Experiment 1 demonstrates systematic and continuous spatial location memory biases as a function of associated affective information; right-handed individuals misremembered positively- and negatively-valenced locations as further right and left, respectively, relative to their original locations. Left-handed individuals did the opposite, and in general those with stronger right- or left-handedness showed greater spatial memory biases. Experiment 2 tested whether participants would show similar effects when studying a map with high visual specificity (i.e., zoomed in); they did not. Overall we support the hypothesis that handedness affects the coding of affective information, and better specify the scope and nature of body-specific effects on spatial memory. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: A fundamental question in human cognition is how people reason about space. We use a computational model to explore cross-cultural commonalities and differences in spatial cognition. Our model is based upon two hypotheses: (1) the structure-mapping model of analogy can explain the visual comparisons used in spatial reasoning; and (2) qualitative, structural representations are computed by people’s visual systems and used in these comparisons. We apply our model to a visual oddity task, in which individuals are shown an array of two-dimensional images and asked to the pick the one that does not belong. This task was previously used to evaluate understanding of geometric concepts in two disparate populations: North Americans, and the Mundurukú, a South American indigenous group. Our model automatically generates representations of each hand-segmented image and compares them to solve the task. The model achieves human-level performance on this task, and problems that are hard for the model are also difficult for people in both cultures. Furthermore, ablation studies on the model suggest explanations for cross-cultural differences in terms of differences in spatial representations. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper disentangles cognitive and communicative factors influencing planning strategies in the everyday task of choosing a route to a familiar location. Describing the way for a stranger in town calls for fundamentally different cognitive processes and strategies than actually walking to a destination. In a series of experiments, this paper addresses route choices, planning processes, and description strategies in a familiar urban environment when asked to walk to a goal location, to describe a route for oneself, or to describe a route for an addressee. Results show systematic differences in the chosen routes with respect to efficiency, number of turns and streets, and street size. The analysis of verbal data provides consistent further insights concerning the nature of the underlying cognitive processes. Actual route navigation is predominantly direction-based and characterized by incremental perception-based optimization processes. In contrast, in-advance route descriptions draw on memory resources to a higher degree and accordingly rely more on salient graph-based structures, and they are affected by concerns of communicability. The results are consistent with the assumption that strategy choice follows a principle of cognitive economy that is highly adaptive to the degree of perceptual information available for the task. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Language has been linked to spatial representation and behavior in humans, but the nature of this effect is debated. Here, we test whether simple verbal expressions improve 4-year-old children’s performance in a disoriented search task in a small rectangular room with a single red landmark wall. Disoriented children’s landmark-guided search for a hidden object was dramatically enhanced when the experimenter used certain verbal expressions to designate the landmark during the hiding event. Both a spatial expression (“I’m hiding the sticker at the red/white wall”) and a non-spatial but task-relevant expression (“The red/white wall can help you get the sticker”) enhanced children’s search, relative to uncued controls. By contrast, a verbal expression that drew attention to the landmark in a task-irrelevant manner (“Look at this pretty red/white wall”) produced no such enhancement. These findings provide further evidence that language changes spatial behavior in children and illuminate one mechanism through which language exerts its effect: by helping children understand the relevance of landmarks for encoding locations. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The present paper explores cross-cultural variation in spatial cognition by comparing spatial reconstruction tasks by Dutch and Namibian elementary school children. These two communities differ in the way they predominantly express spatial relations in language. Four experiments investigate cognitive strategy preferences across different levels of task-complexity and instruction. Data show a correlation between dominant linguistic spatial frames of reference and performance patterns in non-linguistic spatial memory tasks. This correlation is shown to be stable across an increase of complexity in the spatial array. When instructed to use their respective non-habitual cognitive strategy, participants were not easily able to switch between strategies and their attempts to do so impaired their performance. These results indicate a difference not only in preference but also in competence and suggest that spatial language and non-linguistic preferences and competences in spatial cognition are systematically aligned across human populations. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Research indicates that human males interact in groups, whereas females form one-on-one relationships. Whereas females excel in understanding intimate verbally-mediated social information, we hypothesized that males would be more sensitive to the spatial positions of friends within a group. In Study 1, we demonstrate that after a very brief exposure, compared to females, males more accurately recalled the spatial positions of individuals who were friendly with one another when their relative positions mirrored their friendship structures. In Study 2, we demonstrate that females were as accurate as males in reconstituting the positions of individuals who were not friends with one another. In Study 3, we demonstrate that the male advantage remains when indirect cues to positive group relations are used. These results support the idea that the group-based social structure of males renders them more sensitive than females to the use of relational information in reconstituting the short-term spatial locations of group members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Four experiments investigated the role of reference frames during the acquisition and development of spatial knowledge, when learning occurs incrementally across views. In two experiments, participants learned overlapping spatial layouts. Layout 1 was first studied in isolation, and Layout 2 was later studied in the presence of Layout 1. The Layout 1 learning view was manipulated, whereas the Layout 2 view was held constant. Manipulation of the Layout 1 view influenced the reference frame used to organize Layout 2, indicating that reference frames established during early environmental exposure provided a framework for organizing locations learned later. Further experiments demonstrated that reference frames established after learning served to reorganize an existing spatial memory. These results indicate that existing reference frames can structure the acquisition of new spatial memories and that new reference frames can reorganize existing spatial memories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Perceiving the orientation of objects is important for interacting with the world, yet little is known about the mental representation or processing of object orientation information. The tendency of humans and other species to confuse mirror images provides a potential clue. However, the appropriate characterization of this phenomenon is not entirely clear, in part because the stimuli used in most previous studies were not adequate for distinguishing various forms of mirror-image and non-mirror-image error. In the present study we explore the nature of mirror-image confusion and what the phenomenon can reveal about object-orientation representations. We report several experiments in which participants reported the orientations of pictures. In all of the experiments mirror-reflection errors were more frequent than other orientation errors. However, whereas mirror-image confusion has previously been described as a tendency to confuse stimuli that are related by reflection across an extrinsic (usually vertical) axis, the vast majority of mirror-image errors in our experiments were reflections across an object axis. This finding calls into question several hypotheses proposed to explain mirror-image confusion. We describe a coordinate-system orientation representation (COR) hypothesis that can account for our results (). COR assumes that orientation representations map an object-centered reference frame onto a reference frame extrinsic to the object, with this mapping specified by several parameters. According to COR, mirror-image confusions and other orientation errors arise from failures in representing or processing specific parameters. Considered in light of COR, our results suggest that orientation representations are compositional, and that object-centered reference frames play a central role in orientation representation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Research based on the Category Adjustment model concluded that the spatial distribution of target locations does not influence location estimation responses [Huttenlocher, J., Hedges, L., Corrigan, B., & Crawford, L. E. (2004). Spatial categories and the estimation of location. Cognition, 93, 75–97]. This conflicts with earlier results showing that location estimation is biased relative to the spatial distribution of targets [Spencer, J. P., & Hund, A. M. (2002). Prototypes and particulars: Geometric and experience-dependent spatial categories. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 131, 16–37]. Here, we resolve this controversy by using a task based on Huttenlocher et al. (Experiment 4) with minor modifications to enhance our ability to detect experience-dependent effects. Results after the first block of trials replicate the pattern reported in Huttenlocher et al. After additional experience, however, participants showed biases that significantly shifted according to the target distributions. These results are consistent with the Dynamic Field Theory, an alternative theory of spatial cognition that integrates long-term memory traces across trials relative to the perceived structure of the task space. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Recognizing relational similarity relies on the ability to understand that defining object properties might not lie in the objects individually, but in the relations of the properties of various object to each other. This aptitude is highly relevant for many important human skills such as language, reasoning, categorization and understanding analogy and metaphor. In the current study, we investigated the ability to recognize relational similarities by testing five species of great apes, including human children in a spatial task. We found that all species performed better if related elements are connected by logico-causal as opposed to non-causal relations. Further, we find that only children above 4 years of age, bonobos and chimpanzees, unlike younger children, gorillas and orangutans display some mastery of reasoning by non-causal relational similarity. We conclude that recognizing relational similarity is not in its entirety unique to the human species. The lack of a capability for language does not prohibit recognition of simple relational similarities. The data are discussed in the light of the phylogenetic tree of relatedness of the great apes. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The role of environmental geometry in maintaining spatial orientation was measured in immersive virtual reality using a spatial updating task (requiring maintenance of orientation during locomotion) within rooms varying in rotational symmetry (the number of room orientations providing the same perspective). Spatial updating was equally good in trapezoidal, rectangular and square rooms (one-fold, two-fold and four-fold rotationally symmetric, respectively) but worse in a circular room (∞-fold rotationally symmetric). This contrasts with reorientation performance, which was incrementally impaired by increasing rotational symmetry. Spatial updating performance in a shape-changing room (containing visible corners and flat surfaces, but changing its shape over time) was no better than performance in a circular room, indicating that superior spatial updating performance in angular environments was due to remembered room shape, rather than improved self-motion perception in the presence of visible corners and flat surfaces. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Current theories are mixed with regard to the nature of mental representations following spatial description reading. Whereas some findings argue that individuals’ representations are invariant following text-based, map-based, or first-person experience, other studies have suggested that representations can also exhibit considerable flexibility. In the current project we investigated the influences of spatial description perspectives and depictions on the nature of mental representations. In Experiment 1, participants exhibited more flexibility following survey, compared to route, spatial descriptions. With extended study time, though, flexibility following route descriptions increased. In Experiment 2, complementary maps further enhanced flexibility for route-based descriptions. Interestingly, increased exposure to these maps actually reduced flexibility following survey descriptions. These results demonstrate that the nature of our spatial mental representations depends upon a variety of factors; delineating these factors is critical for resolving debates concerning the malleable and invariant characteristics of spatial memory. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: We studied the development of spatial frames of reference in children aged 3–6 years, who retrieved hidden toys from an array of identical containers bordered by landmarks under four conditions. By moving the child and/or the array between presentation and test, we varied the consistency of the hidden toy with (i) the body, and (ii) the testing room. The toy''s position always remained consistent with (iii) the array and bordering landmarks. We found separate, additive performance advantages for consistency with body and room. These effects were already present at 3 years. A striking finding was that the room effect, which implies allocentric representations of the room and/or egocentric representations updated by self-motion, was much stronger in the youngest children than the body effect, which implies purely egocentric representations. Children as young as 3 years therefore had, and greatly favoured, spatial representations that were not purely egocentric. Viewpoint-independent recall based only on the array and bordering landmarks emerged at 5 years. There was no evidence that this later-developing ability, which implies object-referenced (intrinsic) representations, depended on verbal encodings. These findings indicate that core components of adult spatial competence, including parallel egocentric and nonegocentric representations of space, are present as early as 3 years. These are supplemented by later-developing object-referenced representations. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Previous studies show that following disorientation children use the geometry of an enclosed space to locate an object hidden in one of the corners [e.g. (Hermer, L., & Spelke, E. (1996). Modularity and development: A case of spatial reorientation. Cognition, 61, 195–232)]. These studies have used a disorientation procedure that involves rotating the viewer (with eyes closed). Here, we examine 18- to 25-month-olds'' spatial coding in two disorientation tasks—involving either viewer or space rotation. Importantly, the rotational movements in both tasks could not be visually tracked. Children were tested in either task (viewer- or space-movement) from either inside or outside a triangular (isosceles) space (with one unique and two equivalent corners). In the viewer-movement task, performance was above chance, regardless of which corner contained the object. In the space-movement task, performance was above chance at only the unique corner. On both tasks, performance was better from inside the space than from outside. The implications for how children determine location are discussed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In conditions of slow passive transport without vision, even tenuous inertial signals from semi-circular canals and the haptic-kinaesthetic system should provide information about changes relative to the environment provided that it is possible to command the direction of the body''s movements voluntarily. Without such control, spatial updating should be impaired because incoming signals cannot be compared to the expected sensory consequences provided by voluntary command. Participants were seated in a rotative robot (Robuter®) and learnt the positions of five objects in their surroundings. They were then blindfolded and assigned either to the active group (n=7) or to the passive group (n=7). Members of the active group used a joystick to control the direction of rotation of the robot. The acceleration (25°/s2) and plateau velocity (9°/s) were kept constant. The participants of the passive group experienced the same stimuli passively. After the rotations, the participants had to point to the objects whilst blindfolded. Participants in the active group significantly outperformed the participants in the passive group. Thus, even tenuous inertial cues are useful for spatial updating in the absence of vision, provided that such signals are integrated as feedback associated with intended motor command. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

When disoriented in environments with distinctive geometry, such as a closed rectangular arena, human infants and adult rats reorient in accord with the large-scale shape of the environment, but not in accord with nongeometric properties such as the colour of a wall. Human adults, however, conjoined geometric and nongeometric information to reorient themselves, which has led to the suggestion that spatial processing tends to become more flexible over development and evolution. We here show that fish tested in the same tasks perform like human adults and surpass rats and human infants. These findings suggest that the ability to make use of geometry for spatial reorientation is an ancient evolutionary tract and that flexibility and accessibility to multiple sources of information to reorient in space is more a matter of ecological adaptations than phylogenetic distance from humans. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Spatial information plays an important role in how we remember. In general, there are two (non mutually exclusive) views regarding the role that space plays in memory. One view is that objects overlapping in space interfere with each other in memory. For example, objects presented in the same location (at different points in time) are more frequently confused with one another than objects that are not. Another view is that spatial information can 'bootstrap' other kinds of information. For example, remembering a phone number is easier one can see the arrangement of a keypad. Here, building on both perspectives, we test the hypothesis that task-irrelevant spatial structure (i.e., objects appearing in stable locations over repeated iterations) improves working memory. Across 7 experiments, we demonstrate that (1) irrelevant spatial structure improves memory for sequences of objects; (2) this effect does not depend on long-term spatial associations; (3) this effect is unique to space (as opposed to features like color); and (4) spatial structure can be teased apart from spatial interference, and the former drives memory improvement. We discuss how these findings relate to and challenge 'spatial interference' accounts as well as 'visuospatial bootstrapping'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across cultures, people frequently communicate about time in terms of space. English speakers in the United States, for example, might "look forward" to the future or gesture toward the left when talking about the past. As shown by these examples, different dimensions of space are used to represent different temporal concepts. Here, we explored how cultural factors and individual differences shape the development of two types of spatiotemporal representations in 6- to 15-year-old children: the horizontal/vertical mental timeline (in which past and future events are placed on a horizontal or vertical line that is external to the body) and the sagittal mental timeline (in which events are placed on a line that runs through the front-back axis of the body). We tested children in India because the prevalence of both horizontal and vertical calendars there provided a unique opportunity to investigate how calendar orientation and writing direction might each influence the development of the horizontal/vertical mental timeline. Our results suggest that the horizontal/vertical mental timeline and the sagittal mental timeline are constructed in parallel throughout childhood and become increasingly aligned with culturally-conventional orientations. Additionally, we show that experience with calendars may influence the orientation of children's horizontal/vertical mental timelines, and that individual differences in children's attitudes toward the past and future may influence the orientation of their sagittal mental timelines. Taken together, our results demonstrate that children are sensitive to both cultural and personal factors when building mental models of time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aging is accompanied by changes in general cognitive functioning which may impact the learning rate of older adults; however, this is often not controlled for in cognitive aging studies. We investigated the contribution of differences in learning rates to age-related differences in landmark knowledge acquired from route learning. In Experiment 1 we used a standard learning procedure in which participants received a fixed amount of exposure to a route. Consistent with previous research, we found age-related deficits in associative cue and landmark sequence knowledge. Experiment 2 controlled for differences in learning rates by using a flexible exposure learning procedure. Specifically, participants were trained to a performance criterion during route learning before being tested on the content of their route knowledge. While older adults took longer to learn the route than younger adults, the age-related differences in associative cue knowledge were abolished. The deficit in landmark sequence knowledge, however, remained. Experiment 3 replicated these results and introduced a test situation in which a deficit in landmark sequence knowledge yielded an increased likelihood of disorientation in older adults. The findings of this study suggest that age-related deficits in landmark associative cue knowledge are attenuated by controlling for learning rates. In contrast, landmark sequence knowledge deficits persist and are best explained by changes in the learning strategy of older adults to acquire task essential associative cue knowledge at the expense of supplementary sequence knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Visual events are structured in space and time, yet models of visual working memory (VWM) have largely relied on tasks emphasizing spatial aspects. Here, we show that temporal properties of visual events are incidentally encoded along with spatial properties. In five experiments, participants performed change-detection tasks, in which items had unique spatial and temporal coordinates at encoding. Crucially, neither space nor time was task-relevant. The key manipulation concerned the retrieval context: The test array was identical to the memory array either in its entire spatiotemporal structure, or only its spatial or temporal structure. Removing spatial or temporal information at retrieval resulted in costs, indicating that memory relied on both spatial and temporal context in which items were initially perceived. Encoding of spatiotemporal structure occurred incidentally, not strategically, as it was robust even when the retrieval context was perfectly predictable. However, spatial and temporal inter-item spacings influenced the weighting of spatial and temporal information: It favoured the domain in which items were more widely spaced, facilitating their individuation and, likely, access to representations. Across individuals, the weighting of spatial and temporal information varied substantially, but it remained consistent across sessions, suggesting stable preferences for coding in the spatial or temporal domain. No comparable incidental encoding occurred for other task-irrelevant feature dimensions (size or colour). We propose that temporal structure serves as fundamental a function in VWM as spatial structure, scaffolding events that unfold over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We tested four hypotheses about the structure of spatial knowledge used for navigation: (1) the Euclidean hypothesis, a geometrically consistent map; (2) the Neighborhood hypothesis, adjacency relations between spatial regions, based on visible boundaries; (3) the Cognitive Graph hypothesis, a network of paths between places, labeled with approximate local distances and angles; and (4) the Constancy hypothesis, whatever geometric properties are invariant during learning. In two experiments, different groups of participants learned three virtual hedge mazes, which varied specific geometric properties (Euclidean Control Maze, Elastic Maze with stretching paths, Swap Maze with alternating paths to the same place). Spatial knowledge was then tested using three navigation tasks (metric shortcuts on empty ground plane, neighborhood shortcuts with visible boundaries, route task in corridors). They yielded the following results: (a) Metric shortcuts were insensitive to detectable shifts in target location, inconsistent with the Euclidean hypothesis. (b) Neighborhood shortcuts were constrained by visible boundaries in the Elastic Maze, but not in the Swap Maze, contrary to the Neighborhood and Constancy hypotheses. (c) The route task indicated that a graph of the maze was acquired in all environments, including knowledge of local path lengths. We conclude that primary spatial knowledge is consistent with the Cognitive Graph hypothesis. Neighborhoods are derived from the graph, and local distance and angle information is not embedded in a geometrically consistent map. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]