Multidimensional spatial memory: One action, two reference frames

Benjamin Pitt ()
Additional contact information
Benjamin Pitt: IAST - Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: Spatial cognition is fundamental to human behavior, but people differ in how they remember spatial relations, variably using body-based (egocentric) and environment-based (allocentric) spatial reference frames. Despite decades of study, the causes of this variation and flexibility in spatial memory remain unclear. Here we show that people spontaneously use different reference frames on different spatial axes at the same time. When remembering the placement of a target object in a 2-dimensional array, Indigenous Tsimane' adults preferentially used allocentric space to determine lateral placement and egocentric space to determine sagittal placement in the same action. This effect of axis was also significant among US university students, whose overall preference for egocentric space was stronger on the sagittal than lateral axis. These findings support a novel account of spatial cognitive diversity and suggest that people across cultures habitually integrate egocentric and allocentric spatial reference frames into the same action.

Date: 2024
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-neu
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-04939902v1
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, 2024, Vol. 46, pp.276-282

Downloads: (external link)
https://hal.science/hal-04939902v1/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04939902

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().