The effect of instruction on the spatial and temporal aspects of route knowledge

Background:

Recent neuro-imaging and neuropsychological studies have provided evidence for separate processing mechanisms of the spatial and spatiotemporal aspects of routes. We tested the hypothesis that different instructions lead to selective facilitation of the acquisition of either spatial or spatiotemporal knowledge of a virtual route.

Aims:

We aimed to assess the effect of instruction on the spatial and spatiotemporal aspects of a virtual route. Generally, this experiment will further our knowledge of the role of space and time in navigation.

Method:

During the learning phase, participants viewed a route through a virtual maze in which 24 objects were presented. Prior to learning, participants were given one of three instructions: neutral (“try to remember as much as possible from the route”), spatial (“try to remember where you encounter objects along the route”), or spatiotemporal (“try to remember when you encounter objects along the route”). The testing phase comprised three tasks: object recognition, route continuation (spatial task: assessing coupling of objects and directions), and route order (spatiotemporal task: assessing object order).

Expected Results:

The neutral condition will provide a baseline of performance in the three tasks. Relative to the neutral condition, we expect the spatial instruction to selectively facilitate route continuation performance, which is a spatial task in nature. In contrast, we expect enhanced route order performance (a spatiotemporal task) following the spatiotemporal instruction. Lastly, we expect object recognition to be unaffected by the type of instruction, as this task taps into basal object recognition processes.