Relating allocentric and egocentric survey-based representations to the self-reported use of a navigation strategy of egocentric spatial updating☆
Introduction
The classical model that describes the development of spatial knowledge is the sequential/stage model, Landmark, Route, Survey (LRS), first proposed by Siegal and White (1975) and subsequently elaborated by Thorndyke and Goldin (1983). In this model, the representational knowledge of a new environment is proposed to progress sequentially from a foundational level of landmark knowledge to an intermediate level of route/procedural knowledge and finally to an advanced level of survey knowledge. Landmark knowledge is the first to develop during an initial period of familiarization; it includes mental images of discrete objects and scenes which are salient and recognizable in the environment. Route/procedural knowledge links together important, salient landmarks in a sequence and associates specific actions with them (e.g., “turn left in front of the library and walk straight past the benches”). It constitutes a type of non-spatial representation with three main aspects: i) the information of travel is accessed sequentially as an ordered list of different locations; ii) the number of alternative paths branching out from one path is small; and iii) a first-person perspective is adopted to decide on where to go from a given location (Siegal & White, 1975; see also; Werner, Krieg-Brückner, Mallot, Schweizer, & Freksa, 1997). With adequate familiarization or route exposure, representational knowledge acquired from traveling on different route segments gets integrated into survey knowledge (also termed as configurational knowledge) that pertains to a map-like network of objects/landmarks, termed as a survey-based representation. A survey-based representation is characterized by: i) spatial extent over a common coordinate or reference system; ii) abstract or symbolic mental representations of physical or geographical entities in the real world; and iii) metrically scaled information about distance and direction between environmental features (i.e., landmarks, routes, and districts) (Siegal & White, 1975; see also; Berendt, Barkowsky, Freksa, & Kelter, 1998). The survey-based representation, unlike route knowledge that is acquired though the sequential merging of segmented paths, is formed by the spatial integration of landmark configurations, and gives fast and route-independent retrieval of landmark locations (Thorndyke & Goldin, 1983; see also; Rothkegel, Wender, & Schumacher, 1998).
Despite being highly influential for decades, Siegal and White’s (1975) LRS model has not received convincing empirical support. A number of studies had shown that the route knowledge acquired early on after direct exposure to a new environment did not always become survey knowledge despite repeated exposures (e.g., Chase, 1983, Gärling et al., 1981, Ishikawa and Montello, 2006). For instance, Ishikawa and Montello (2006) showed that there were participants who consistently demonstrated poor estimations of directions and distances despite repeated route exposure, as well as others who demonstrated highly accurate performance on the same spatial measures from the very first session. In addition, another problem with the Siegal and White’s (1975) LRS model is that it cannot account for an accumulating amount of evidence suggesting that the spatial memory of physical environments could be acquired and represented through two types of perspectives: the first-person (field) and third-person (observer) perspectives (see, e.g., Blajenkova et al., 2005, Hirtle and Hudson, 1991, Nigro and Neisser, 1983, Sutton, 2010, Taylor and Tversky, 1996, Werner et al., 1997). The first-person perspective is closely linked to one's visuo-perceptual experience (Herrmann, 1996) and assuming this perspective requires one to visualize or recall scenes from a body-centered field of view (Nigro & Neisser, 1983). In contrast, the third-person perspective is closely linked to a bird's eye or aerial view of a spatial layout (Cohen, 1989) and assuming this perspective requires one to imagine scenes from an external or disembodied vantage point (Nigro & Neisser, 1983).
In a previous study which implicated the involvement of these two perspectives in the formation of survey-based representations, Blajenkova et al. (2005) asked each of their participants to draw a sketchmap after traversing a route comprising of two levels in a previously unfamiliar building, and classified those sketchmaps into three categories: i) one-dimensional (1D) sketchmaps that showed landmarks connected in a sequential and non-spatial fashion; ii) two-dimensional (2D) sketchmaps that showed the route's spatial configuration on one plane which implicated the adoption of an aerial view; and iii) two-level three-dimensional (3D) sketchmaps that was exceptional for showing the spatial layout of each floor separately but in alignment along the vertical dimension. The finding of 3D sketchmaps was novel and interestingly suggested that their sketchers might have primarily engaged the first-person perspective while generating survey-based representations. Overall, these results showed that individual differences in the formation of environmental representations exist and highlighted that certain individuals could acquire survey-based representations after just one exposure to a novel environment. In view of this research, the traditional stage-like procedure of route learning—characterized by first attending to landmark and route information, followed by abstract mapping of inter-relationships between landmarks or places (Thorndyke and Goldin, 1983, Thorndyke and Hayes-Roth, 1982)—should then not be considered as the only way that could lead to the formation of survey-based representations.
Over the past three decades, numerous studies have offered strong evidence for the existence of a special mode of navigation called spatial updating (e.g., Farrell and Thomson, 1998, Klatzky et al., 2003, Klatzky et al., 1998, Klatzky et al., 1990, Loomis et al., 1998, Loomis et al., 2002, Loomis et al., 1993, Wang and Brockmole, 2003, Wang and Spelke, 2000, Wang et al., 2006). Importantly, several researchers have proposed that spatial updating can exist through two formats or reference systems in which egocentric (self-to-object) and allocentric (object-to-object) spatial relations are processed respectively (see, e.g., Burgess, 2006, Hodgson and Waller, 2006, Mou et al., 2004, Rump and McNamara, 2013, Sholl, 2001, Wang et al., 2006). For the purpose of this current research, this paper focuses on the greater relevance of egocentric spatial updating for navigation as it has been suggested to be more involved in forming an online representation of the location of surrounding landmarks as one moves (see, e.g., Rieser, 1999, Wang and Brockmole, 2003) and that the egocentric experience that is inherent in its use has been proposed to contribute to the selection and encoding of reference directions in long-term spatial memory (see McNamara et al., 2003, Rump and McNamara, 2013). Hence, in this paper, spatial updating is defined in egocentric terms as a dynamic process whereby a navigator continuously computes and updates transient self-to-object relations towards surrounding objects/landmarks or locations while traversing a path (see Amorim et al., 1997, Loomis et al., 1998, Philbeck et al., 2001). During egocentric spatial updating, a navigator relies on internal (idiothetic) signals (i.e., proprioception and vestibular feedback) and external (allothetic) signals (i.e., acoustic and optic flow) to continuously compute estimates of self-position and orientation within external space (Loomis, Klatzky, Golledge, & Philbeck, 1999). In its basic form, egocentric spatial updating is known as path integration (also called dead reckoning, Loomis et al., 1999). It has been found to be practiced by animals like gerbils (Mittelstaedt & Mittelstaedt, 1980), desert ants (Müller and Wehner, 1988, Wehner and Wehner, 1986), and golden hamsters (Etienne, 1980, Etienne et al., 1986), and is normally characterized by a navigator's continuous updating of the location of a starting point relative to his/her current position and orientation during locomotion (Loomis et al., 1999; see also; Wiener, Berthoz, & Wolbers, 2011). In terms of similarity, both path integration and egocentric spatial updating rely largely on an egocentric frame of frame (akin to the first-person perspective) (Klatzky, 1998) or an egocentric representation system (Mou et al., 2004)—also known as a body-centered spatial framework (Bryant et al., 1992, Franklin and Tversky, 1990, Tversky et al., 1999)— to compute and represent the location and orientation of surrounding objects with respect to the navigator's body. Principally, it is this dependence on the egocentric (body-centered) representation system or framework that distinguishes egocentric spatial updating from the higher level of route-based learning that is characterized by survey knowledge acquisition through survey-based (metric) navigation (see Trullier, Wiener, Berthoz, & Meyer, 1997).
In contrast to egocentric spatial updating, survey-based navigation centrally relies on an allocentric reference frame (akin to the third-person perspective) (Klatzky, 1998) or an environmental representation system (Mou et al., 2004; see also; Sholl, 2008) to visualize the coordinates of objects, landmarks and places and their interrelationships. This allocentric or environmental reference system has been widely implicated to be recruited in the storage of offline or long term/comprehensive spatial memories of configurations of objects or landmarks (see, e.g., Shelton and McNamara, 2001, McNamara et al., 2003, Mou et al., 2004, Mou and McNamara, 2002, Mou et al., 2009, Mou et al., 2007). Based on spatial knowledge assessment of the relative locations of objects, spatial memories of object arrays have been suggested to be organized allocentrically according to the intrinsic reference axes of object arrays, which are perceptually salient or symmetrical lines of arrangements of objects commonly aligned with orientations of 0°–180° (i.e., a north-south axis) and/or 90°–270° (i.e., an east-west axis) (see, e.g., Shelton and McNamara, 2001, Mou and McNamara, 2002, Greenauer and Waller, 2010). Crucially, Mou et al.’s (2004) model of spatial memory and updating proposes that the initial egocentric experience with the object configuration (i.e., a ground-level view of the objects from a designated viewpoint) contributes to the selection of intrinsic reference axes/directions along which objects are optimally organized for storage in spatial memory (see also Mou et al., 2007; for further elaboration of this model). Yet despite highlighting the importance of egocentric experience, the linkage of egocentric spatial updating or path integration to an eventual acquisition of spatial memory in the form of a survey-based representation remains unknown. Therefore, this paper aims to clarify the extent to which egocentric spatial updating can contribute to the formation of survey-based representations. Specifically, it asks whether two subtypes of survey-based representations can emerge from the differential implementation of egocentric spatial updating as a strategic construct.
To provide evidence for two potential subtypes of survey-based representations, the first study was conducted based on real-world navigation of a previously unfamiliar route, sketchmap drawing, and behavioral testing of and landmark and spatial knowledge. It focuses on examining the fidelity of the stored spatial memories associated with these two kinds of mental/cognitive maps formed after route learning, in line with the paradigm of past research (e.g., Hirtle and Hudson, 1991, Ishikawa and Montello, 2006, Thorndyke and Hayes-Roth, 1982). Specifically, it is proposed that a higher engagement of egocentric spatial updating during route learning, together with the involvement of the allocentric reference system for long-term storage of interobject relations, would engender egocentric survey-based representations—termed hereafter as egocentric-survey representations. On the other hand, it is proposed that a lower engagement of egocentric spatial updating, but comparatively greater allocentric reference frame use through survey-based navigation, would engender allocentric survey-based representations—termed hereafter as allocentric-survey representations. In conjunction, these proposals centrally suggest that bearers of egocentric-survey representations would engage the egocentric reference frame or the first person perspective to a larger extent than bearers of allocentric-survey representations in the processing of spatial information during route learning. It is vital to note that the first study set out to relate the preferential use of different reference frames or perspectives to the formation of survey-based representations, and that it was not designed to address the specific question of whether a particular subtype of survey-based representation is orientation-specific (i.e., optimal organization and retrieval of spatial relations from specific orientations or viewpoints, see, e.g., Easton and Sholl, 1995, Sholl and Nolin, 1997) or orientation-free (i.e., no specific preference for any orientation in the encoding and retrieval of spatial relations, see, e.g., Presson and Hazelrigg, 1984, Presson et al., 1989). This was due to environmental constraints (e.g., route segments and arrays of landmarks with no regular geometric shapes) that complicated the design of a suitable spatial task for analyzing orientation-specificity.
To provide greater evidence for the proposal of egocentric spatial updating being highly involved in the formation of the egocentric-survey representation, a new Navigation Strategy Questionnaire (NSQ) was designed in Study 2 to explore the relationships between different types of environmental representations and the strategies that characterize different navigational modes or styles. The NSQ introduced a novel self-report scale of egocentric spatial updating strategy together with two traditional self-report scales of procedural/route and survey-based strategies that are conceptually similar to those designed by previous studies (e.g., Kato and Takeuchi, 2003, Lawton, 1994, Takeuchi, 1992). Critically, with the introduction of the new spatial updating scale, this study aimed to investigate the influence of individual differences in egocentric spatial updating on mental map formation and processing of spatial relationships in a large-scale environment. The design of this spatial updating scale is a novel attempt as previous studies had only shown individuals to differ in the use of route and survey-based navigation strategies (e.g., Baldwin and Reagan, 2009, Baldwin, 2009, Kato and Takeuchi, 2003, Lawton, 1994, Lawton, 1996).
To date, pre-existing self-report spatial navigation questionnaires have only focused on assessing route and survey-based strategies (see, e.g., Kato and Takeuchi, 2003, Lawton, 1994, Lawton, 1996, Lawton and Kallai, 2002, Pazzaglia et al., 2000, Pazzaglia and De Beni, 2001, Takeuchi, 1992). Although some questionnaires have items that assess certain mechanisms of spatial updating (Hegarty et al., 2002, Lawton and Kallai, 2002, Lawton, 1994, Pazzaglia and De Beni, 2001, Pazzaglia et al., 2000), none of those items constituted a scale aimed at assessing egocentric spatial updating strategy only. For instance, in the design of the Wayfinding Strategy Scale (Lawton & Kallai, 2002), the researchers performed principal component analysis (n = 512) and found two factors seen as representing route and orientation strategies respectively. The route strategy factor included items assessing a reliance on visible signs, landmarks, and verbal instructions to find directions, while the orientation strategy factor was a mix of items assessing a reliance on cardinal/compass directions and interobject relations while navigating (related to survey-based strategy) and items assessing the spatial updating mechanism of tracking self-to-object relations (e.g., I kept track of where I was in relation to a reference point, such as the center of town, lake, river, or mountain, see Lawton & Kallai, 2002, p. 392). Similarly, in an examination of the Questionnaire on Spatial Representation designed by Pazzaglia et al., 2000, Pazzaglia and De Beni, 2001 performed factor analysis (n = 285) and revealed five factors. Notably, the first factor grouped six items termed as representing a general “sense of direction”; amongst them, three could be seen as assessing the spatial updating mechanisms of visualizing non-visible landmarks and maintaining one's egocentric orientation in relation to environmental cues (e.g., In a complex building (store, museum) do you think spontaneously and easily about your direction in relation to the general structure of the building and the external environment?, see Pazzaglia & De Beni, 2001, p. 507). As for the four other factors, they grouped items pertaining to survey-based navigation (i.e., items assessing an awareness of compass directions for orientation purpose) and route navigation (i.e., items assessing the use of landmarks for orientation and memory of routes and landmarks). The third spatial navigation questionnaire that includes items assessing spatial updating is the Santa Barbara Sense-of-Direction (SBSOD) scale (Hegarty et al., 2002) that renders one scale score representing environmental spatial ability. The SBSOD has several items assessing one's directional awareness (e.g., My “sense of direction” is very good, see Hegarty et al., 2002, p.445) that could be seen as akin to assessing the spatial updating mechanism of tracking self-to-object relations. Its other items assess route knowledge, survey-based knowledge, and visual memory of objects.
The review of the three questionnaires above showed that although each one of them has several items related to egocentric spatial updating, those items were incorporated into a scale that was conceptualized as assessing either orientation strategy (Lawton & Kallai, 2002) or “sense of direction” (Hegarty et al., 2002, Pazzaglia and De Beni, 2001). Those items were neither conceptualized as assessing egocentric spatial updating nor grouped together as a scale for the purpose of investigating individual differences in egocentric spatial updating. This absence of any existing self-report scale assessing egocentric spatial updating strategy may also stem from the fact that a better understanding of the cognitive and neural mechanisms of spatial updating has only been attained during recent times (for reviews, see Burgess, 2006, Wolbers and Hegarty, 2010). Therefore, by designing a new scale of egocentric spatial updating strategy that is differentiated from two other scales addressing conventional route/procedural and survey-based strategies, this study aimed to examine individual differences in egocentric spatial updating and find out whether egocentric spatial updating within environmental space is related to the formation of a unique egocentric-survey representation.
In Study 1, participants were taken on a traversal of a previously unfamiliar route, at the end of which they were instructed to draw out sketchmaps and perform a series of behavioral assessments. The employment of the sketchmap drawing task took into account numerous previous studies which applied it to infer how people visualize and mentally organize environmental space and features (see, e.g., Appleyard, 1970, Lynch, 1960, Metz, 1990, Wise and Kon, 1990, Taylor and Tversky, 1992, Tversky and Lee, 1998). Importantly, previous studies have demonstrated sketchmaps to be reliable conveyors of environmental knowledge (Blades, 1990), and valid predictors of navigational performance (Rovine & Weisman, 1989) and spatial/survey-based knowledge (Billinghurst and Weghorst, 1995, Lohmann, 2011).
Based on different salient characteristics, the sketchmaps were grouped into three categories— i) procedural route; ii) allocentric-survey; and iii) egocentric-survey—that were analogous in the style of portrayal to Blajenkova et al.’s (2005) 1D, 2D, and 3D sketchmaps, and then analyzed for between-groups differences in behavioral measures. In order to show that the allocentric- and egocentric-survey representations could be distinguished in terms of spatial knowledge assessments, egocentric-survey map sketchers were expected to outperform allocentric-survey map sketchers on two pointing-to-landmarks tasks that assessed the processing of spatial relationships. Specifically, in an Imaginal Pointing Direction Task (I-PDT) that assessed pointing responses based on imagined headings, it was predicted that egocentric-survey map sketchers would respond faster than allocentric-survey map sketchers due to the former group's faster retrieval of interobject relations with referral to encoded egocentric viewpoints. On the other hand, in terms of accuracy, the two groups of survey map sketchers were not expected to differ as the attainment of survey knowledge by both groups should lead to the encoding of relatively accurate spatial information about landmark locations. In addition to the pointing tasks, egocentric-survey map sketchers were further expected to outperform allocentric-survey map sketchers on a landmark recognition task (LRT) that assessed the visual memory of landmarks. This is because egocentric-survey map sketchers' encoding of landmarks from multiple egocentric viewpoints during route learning should subsequently lead to faster retrieval of landmark knowledge.
In Study 2, the NSQ was designed and tested for validity based on the above navigation tasks. To give evidence for the existence of individual differences in egocentric spatial updating, it was predicted that the spatial updating scale would demonstrate significant predictive validity with respect to the PDTs, and that the egocentric-survey map sketchers would report significantly higher scores than either of the two other groups of map sketchers. In addition, the relationships between the navigation strategies and environmental representations were examined in order to discover the preferred strategies of each group of map sketchers.
Section snippets
Participants
Seventy-one participants (33 females) ranging from 19 to 45 years of age (M = 22.31, SD = 3.87) participated in the study. Forty-one participants were recruited from the psychology research participant pool at National University of Singapore (NUS) whereas 30 participants were recruited through online advertisement of the study. The advertisement required participants to be unfamiliar with the School of Design and Environment (SDE) at NUS. Upon contacting the experimenter, potential
Study 2
This study aimed to identify individual differences in egocentric spatial updating with regards to spatial knowledge acquisition as conveyed by pointing-to-landmarks performance, and to clarify the relationships between three types of self-reported navigation strategies (egocentric spatial updating, survey-based, procedural) and the three sketchmap categories discovered in Study 1. Specifically, it aims to examine whether egocentric-survey map sketchers would self-report the use of the
General discussion
This study as a whole investigated whether or not two subtypes of survey-based representations, formed on the basis of differential engagement of the allocentric and egocentric reference frames, can be distinguished from each other using sketchmaps and relevant behavioral tasks, and the association of a self-reported egocentric spatial updating strategy to the acquisition of survey knowledge. Study 1 provided evidence to suggest the two subtypes of survey-based representations can be portrayed
Acknowledgements
This research was supported by the Graduate Research Support Scheme (GRSS) research grant of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, National University of Singapore (Grant ref. no.: C581000271511). I thank Hanwei Poh for his assistance with charting out the route at the School of Design and Environment, data-collection in Study 1, and sketchmap categorization. Likewise, I thank Weiming Lun for his assistance with data-collection in Study 2. I also thank Takashi Obana and Simon K. G. Goh for
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This research was supported by the National University of Singapore and the US Office of Naval Research (ONR-N00014-10-1-0638, Kozhevnikov). The manuscript is based on Jimmy Zhong’s Master’s thesis, conducted at the National University of Singapore. The first version of the NSQ questionnaire was developed by Maria Kozhevnikov and Olesya Blazhenkova at George Mason University under grant ONR-N000140611072. We thank Olesya Blazhenkova for her help in designing and conducting the experiments. We also thank Jack Loomis for helpful discussion and comments on the manuscript. Correspondence regarding the manuscript should be send to [email protected] or [email protected]. This research was carried out by the first author at NUS from 2011 to 2013.