Relative cue precision and prior knowledge contribute to the preference of proximal and distal landmarks in human orientation.

A prevailing argument posits that distal landmarks dominate over proximal landmarks as orientation cues. However, no studies have tested this argument or examined the underlying mechanisms. This project aimed to close this gap by examining the roles of relative cue precision and prior knowledge in cue preference.

Path integration, rather than being suppressed, is used to update spatial views in familiar environments with constantly available landmarks.

This project tested three hypotheses conceptualizing the interaction between path integration based on self-motion and piloting based on landmarks in a familiar environment with persistent landmarks. The first hypothesis posits that path integration functions automatically, as in environments lacking persistent landmarks (environment-independent hypothesis). The second hypothesis suggests that persistent landmarks suppress path integration (suppression hypothesis).

When humans can fly: Imprecise vertical encoding in human 3D spatial navigation.

Previous research indicates that while animals who locomote on surfaces have a more variable and less precise spatial coding vertically than horizontally, animals who fly do not demonstrate a horizontal advantage (Hayman et al., 2011; Yartsev and Ulanovsky, 2013). The current study investigated whether humans' localization is more variable vertically than horizontally in different locomotion modes.

Dissociating position and heading estimations: rotated visual orientation cues perceived after walking reset headings but not positions.

This project examined the roles of idiothetic cues due to individuals' movement and allothetic cues independent of individuals' movement in individuals' estimations of their position and heading during locomotion. In an immersive virtual environment, participants learned the locations of five objects and then moved along two legs of a path before positioning the origin and the objects. Participants' estimations of their test position and their test heading were calculated based on the responded objects' locations, using a method of dissociating position estimation and heading estimation developed in this project.