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01-02-2013 | Research Article

Cognitive mapping in humans and its relationship to other orientation skills

Authors: Aiden E. G. F. Arnold, Ford Burles, Taisya Krivoruchko, Irene Liu, Colin D. Rey, Richard M. Levy, Giuseppe Iaria

Published in: Experimental Brain Research | Issue 3/2013

Abstract

Human orientation in novel and familiar environments is a complex skill that can involve numerous different strategies. To date, a comprehensive account of how these strategies interrelate at the behavioural level has not been documented, impeding the development of elaborate systems neuroscience models of spatial orientation. Here, we describe a virtual environment test battery designed to assess five of the core strategies used by humans to orient. Our results indicate that the ability to form a cognitive map is highly related to more basic orientation strategies, supporting previous proposals that encoding a cognitive map requires inputs from multiple domains of spatial processing. These findings provide a topology of numerous primary orientation strategies used by humans during orientation and will allow researchers to elaborate on neural models of spatial cognition that currently do not account for how different orientation strategies integrate over time based on environmental conditions.

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Title: Cognitive mapping in humans and its relationship to other orientation skills
Authors: Aiden E. G. F. Arnold
Ford Burles
Taisya Krivoruchko
Irene Liu
Colin D. Rey
Richard M. Levy
Giuseppe Iaria
Publication date: 01-02-2013
Publisher: Springer-Verlag
Published in: Experimental Brain Research / Issue 3/2013
Print ISSN: 0014-4819
Electronic ISSN: 1432-1106
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-012-3316-0

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Cognitive mapping in humans and its relationship to other orientation skills

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