Practice improves older adults' attentional control and prospective memory more than HD-tDCS: a randomized controlled trial.

Frontal and parietal brain regions are involved in attentional control and prospective memory. It is debated, however, whether increased or decreased activity in those regions is beneficial for older adults' task performance. We therefore aimed to systematically modulate activity in those regions using high-definition transcranial direct current stimulation.

Associations Between Binocular Depth Perception and Performance Gains in Laparoscopic Skill Acquisition.

The ability to perceive differences in depth is important in many daily life situations. It is also of relevance in laparoscopic surgical procedures that require the extrapolation of three-dimensional visual information from two-dimensional planar images. Besides visual-motor coordination, laparoscopic skills and binocular depth perception are demanding visual tasks for which learning is important.

Investigating the utility of VR for spatial understanding in surgical planning: evaluation of head-mounted to desktop display.

Recent technological advances have made Virtual Reality (VR) attractive in both research and real world applications such as training, rehabilitation, and gaming. Although these other fields benefited from VR technology, it remains unclear whether VR contributes to better spatial understanding and training in the context of surgical planning. In this study, we evaluated the use of VR by comparing the recall of spatial information in two learning conditions: a head-mounted display (HMD) and a desktop screen (DT).

Are Spatial Memories for Familiar Environments Orientation Dependent?

In one experiment we examined the organizational structure of spatial memories for familiar environments, comparing it directly with that for unfamiliar environments. Participants in the familiar condition pointed from imagined perspectives towards objects in their own rooms and their performance was compared to that of matched controls in an unfamiliar condition who carried out the same task after studying the same rooms in immersive Virtual Reality. In both conditions, participants were faster and more accurate in pointing from imagined perspectives that were aligned with the geometry of the room (vs.

Alignment Effects in Spatial Perspective Taking from an External Vantage Point.

In three experiments, we examined, using a perceptual task, the difficulties of spatial perspective taking. Participants imagined adopting perspectives around a table and pointed from them towards the positions of a target. Depending on the condition, the scene was presented on a virtual screen in Virtual Reality or projected on an actual screen in the real world (Experiment 1), or viewed as immediate in Virtual Reality (Experiment 2).

Orientation-dependent spatial memories for scenes viewed on mobile devices.

We examined whether spatial representations for scenes experienced on the screens of mobile devices are orientation dependent and whether the type of movement (physical vs. simulated) during learning affects the encoding and the retrieval of spatial information. Participants studied a spatial layout depicted on a tablet and then carried out perspective-taking trials in which they localized objects from imagined perspectives.

Updating spatial relations to remote locations described in narratives.

In four experiments we examined whether sensorimotor encoding influences readers' reasoning about spatial scenes acquired through narratives. Participants read a narrative that described the geometry of a store and then pointed to the memorized locations of described objects from imagined perspectives. In Experiment 1, participants walked during learning towards the direction of every described object and then visualized these objects as being in the immediate environment.

What's so difficult with adopting imagined perspectives?

Research on spatial cognition suggests that transformation processes and/or spatial conflicts may influence performance on mental perspective-taking tasks. However, conflicting findings have complicated our understanding about the processes involved in perspective-taking, particularly those giving rise to angular disparity effects, whereby performance worsens as the imagined perspective adopted deviates from one's actual perspective. Based on data from experiments involving mental perspective-taking in immediate and remote spatial layouts, we propose here a novel account for the difficulty with perspective-taking.

The protagonist's first perspective influences the encoding of spatial information in narratives.

Three experiments examined the first-perspective alignment effect that is observed when retrieving spatial information from memory about described environments. Participants read narratives that described the viewpoint of a protagonist in fictitious environments and then pointed to the memorized locations of described objects from imagined perspectives. Results from Experiments 1 and 2 showed that performance was best when participants responded from the protagonist's first perspective even though object locations were described from a different perspective.