How you get there from here: Interaction of visual landmarks and path integration in human navigation

Zhao, Mintao and Warren, William H. (2015) How you get there from here: Interaction of visual landmarks and path integration in human navigation. Psychological Science, 26 (6). pp. 915-924. ISSN 0956-7976

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Abstract

How do people combine their sense of direction with their use of visual landmarks during navigation? Cue-integration theory predicts that such cues will be optimally integrated to reduce variability, whereas cue-competition theory predicts that one cue will dominate the response direction. We tested these theories by measuring both accuracy and variability in a homing task while manipulating information about path integration and visual landmarks. We found that the two cues were near-optimally integrated to reduce variability, even when landmarks were shifted up to 90°. Yet the homing direction was dominated by a single cue, which switched from landmarks to path integration when landmark shifts were greater than 90°. These findings suggest that cue integration and cue competition govern different aspects of the homing response: Cues are integrated to reduce response variability but compete to determine the response direction. The results are remarkably similar to data on animal navigation, which implies that visual landmarks reset the orientation, but not the precision, of the path-integration system.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© The Author(s) 2015.
Uncontrolled Keywords:	navigation,bayesian integration,cue competition,path integration,visual landmarks
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Psychology
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Developmental Science Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Cognition, Action and Perception
Depositing User:	Pure Connector
Date Deposited:	07 Sep 2017 05:06
Last Modified:	11 Jul 2023 09:30
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/64766
DOI:	10.1177/0956797615574952

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