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Valued-based decision-making has been studied for decades in myriad topics such as consumer spending and gambling, but very rarely in spatial navigation despite the link between the two being highly relevant to survival. Furthermore, how people integrate episodic memories, and what factors are related to the extent of memory integration in value-based decision-making, remain largely unknown. In the current study, participants learned locations of various objects in a virtual environment and then decided whether to reach goal objects from familiar starting locations or unpredictable ones, with different penalties associated with each option. We developed computational models to test whether, when given an object to find, participants' starting location decisions reflected their past performance specific to that goal (Target-specific model) or integrated memory from performance with all goals in the environment (Target-common model). Because participants' wayfinding performance improved throughout the experiment, we were able to examine what factors related to the generalization of past experience. We found that most participants' decisions were better fit by the Target-common model, and for the people whose decisions were better fit by the Target-common model this integrative tendency may be tied to their concurrently greater performance variability with individual targets. Moreover, greater success on our task was predicted by an interaction between the ability to estimate probabilities relevant to decision-making and self-report general task ability. Collectively, our results show how related navigational episodic memories can be reflected in decision-making, and uncover individual differences contributing to such processes.

Daily function depends on an ability to mentally map our environment. Environmental visibilityand complexity can increase this challenge. Importantly, people vary dramatically in their abilityto navigate flexibly and overcome such environmental challenges. In this paper, we will presentexperimental work targeting the mechanisms that underlie different navigational abilities, andhow objective and introspective measures of ability interact to influence navigational strategyuse. Using virtual reality, we manipulated environmental visibility and complexity. Participantsthen performed wayfinding, pointing, and route following tasks to probe cognitive map memoryand navigational flexibility. Our findings reveal that individual differences in metacognition -such as perceived sense of direction - and in navigational strategy preference powerfully impacthow environmental features affect spatial memory. We also gathered data on the neurocognitivefoundations of these differences. Importantly, our methods highlight individualized interventionsthat can improve spatial learning and specify the mechanisms through which they operate.

In the current study, we investigated the ways in which the acquisition and transfer of spatial knowledge were affected by (a) the type of spatial relations predominately experienced during learning (routes determined by walkways vs. straight-line paths between locations); (b) environmental complexity; and (c) the availability of rotational body-based information. Participants learned the layout of a virtual shopping mall by repeatedly searching for target storefronts located in 1 of the buildings. We created 2 novel learning conditions to encourage participants to use either route knowledge (paths on walkways between buildings) or survey knowledge (straight-line distances and directions from storefront to storefront) to find the target, and measured the development of route and survey knowledge in both learning conditions. Environmental complexity was manipulated by varying the alignment of the buildings with the enclosure, and the visibility within space. Body-based information was manipulated by having participants perform the experiment in front of a computer monitor or using a head-mounted display. After navigation, participants pointed to various storefronts from a fixed position and orientation. Results showed that the frequently used spatial knowledge could be developed similarly across environments with different complexities, but the infrequently used spatial knowledge was less developed in the complex environment. Furthermore, rotational body-based information facilitated spatial learning under certain conditions. Our results suggest that path integration may play an important role in spatial knowledge transfer, both from route to survey knowledge (cognitive map construction), and from survey to route knowledge (using cognitive map to guide wayfinding).

Xingsu 'xinren': Zhonggong xuanchuan yu Sulian jingyan [phrase omitted]: (Shaping (Shaping the New Man: CCP Propaganda and Soviet Experiences). By YU MIIN-LING. Taipei [phrase omitted] Zhongyang yanjiu yuan jindaishi yanjiu [...]