title: Spatial memory in the real world: long-term representations of everyday environments.
abstract: When people learn an environment, they appear to establish a principle orientation just as they would determine the "top" of a novel object. Evidence for reference orientations has largely come from observations of orientation dependence in pointing judgments: Participants are most accurate when asked to recall the space from a particular orientation. However, these investigations have used highly constrained encoding in both time-scale and navigational goals, leaving open the possibility that larger spaces experienced during navigational learning depend on a different organizational scheme. To test this possibility, we asked undergraduates to perform judgments of relative direction on familiar landmarks around their well-learned campus. Participants showed clear evidence for a single reference orientation, generally aligned along salient axes defined by the buildings and paths. This result argues that representing space involves the establishment of a reference orientation, a requirement that endures over repeated exposures and extensive experience.
authors.affiliation: Dept of Psych & Brain Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, 3400 N Charles St, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA.
authors.forename: Steven A
authors.initials: SA
authors.lastname: Marchette
authors.forename: Ashok
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Yerramsetti
authors.forename: Thomas J
authors.initials: TJ
authors.lastname: Burns
authors.forename: Amy L
authors.initials: AL
authors.lastname: Shelton
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment / Q000502:physiology; D057567:Memory, Long-Term / Q000502:physiology*; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology*; D009949:Orientation / Q000502:physiology*; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult