Analog Representation of
Spatial Information
Steffen Werner, Gerd Lüer, Christina Saade, Thomas Schmidt
University of Göttingen, Georg-Elias-Müller-Institute of Psychology
Duration: 1996 - 2002
Project homepage:
www.gwdg.de/~sppraum/
One of the main challenges
of human behavior is to coordinate actions within a spatial environment.
In spatial navigation, routes have to be planned, obstacles have to be
avoided, and one's position continually has to be updated. When searching
for an object, its location has to be remembered or strategic spatial search
mechanisms have to be instantiated. To grasp an object, the relative location
of the object with respect to the person's body has to be taken into account.
The research in
our lab tries to answer some of the questions relating to the mental representations
and processes used by humans to solve these problems. Our focus lies on
the ways in which spatial knowledge is stored and retrieved by humans.
We are specifically looking at three separate questions. How is spatial
knowledge about the environment stored and accessed? Is spatial knowledge
mentally represented differently for different actions or different scales
of space? And finally, how can knowledge about human spatial cognition
be applied to real-world problems, such as wayfinding, signage, geographical
information systems (GIS), architectual design or landscaping, and simple
virtual reality (VR) interfaces?
In a number of studies
we were able to demonstrate the influence of the spatial structure of an
environment on the mental accessibility of remembered spatial information.
The geometric structure of a room, the street layout of a city, and dominant
architectual structures in a large landscape determine environmental reference
systems which are reflected in human spatial memory. These findings have
direct implications for the design of spatial information systems.
In a second line
of studies we investigate the influence of spatial reference systems on
the accuracy of remembered locations in human memory. When trying to remember
a location, humans err consistently and systematically, indicating biases
and distortions in their location memory. Using exact analyses of such
distortion patterns we are currently trying to model the underlying properties
of human location memory.
Approaches:
empirical investigation; modeling; application
Area of Research:
cognitive
psychology
Topics: memory;
cognitive maps; navigation; actions; virtual reality; perception
Publications of project cooperations:
H
- Landmark Usage
D
- Route Learning
F
- Robot Navigation
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