Spatial Updating in Complex Environments
Humans live in complex, structured environments. How do we mentally
represent our relationships to those
environments? Do humans learn and remember their environments in the
same way as other animals, or do they use fundamentally different
mechanisms? How do people solve spatial problems related to complex
environments that other animals never have to face?
We are currently building virtual worlds for experiments on these and
similar questions. For example, participants might be required to stand
in
the middle of a virtual kitchen and study it for a while. They might
also be shown a virtual quad, i.e. a set of buildings around them. Then
the virtual world would disappear and the participant would be required
to make
judgments about the locations of various objects in the virtual
world after making a particular turn or other movement.
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