The Mechanisms of Spatial Updating

University Of Illinois At Urbana-Champaign, Urbana IL

Investigators

Abstract

Spatial knowledge plays an important role in daily life. We must learn the layout of the streets and buildings to navigate between home and work. We must remember where a book was put down, where the dinner plates are stored, and other ordinary instances of spatial location. What's the nature of this spatial knowledge? Are we allocentric in that we learn objects' spatial relationships to each other, or egocentric in that we learn things relative to our own position in space? If the latter, how do we acquire and maintain accurate knowledge when it changes with every step we take and every turn we make? Also, have we a different spatial system than our ancestors due to daily exposure to complex, nested urban environment or new technologies such as maps and virtual realities? With NSF support, Dr. Ranxiao Wang will seek to answer these questions. Her studies include new methods to distinguish between different types of spatial knowledge, to examine whether spatial knowledge differs for different types of environments, and what forms of spatial knowledge operate in virtual environments. The broader impacts of her research include the potential to better understand various spatial deficits and navigation difficulties. Moreover, her research compares spatial processing in real and virtual worlds, which will provide insights for how to develop user-friendly virtual reality systems.