Integration of Spatial Relations across Perceptual Experiences

Abstract

People often carry out tasks that entail coordinating spatial information encoded in temporally and/or spatially distinct perceptual experiences. Much research has been conducted to determine whether such spatial information is integrated into a single spatial representation or whether it is kept in separate representations that can be related at the time of retrieval. Here, we review the existing literature on the integration of spatial information and present results from a new experiment aimed at examining whether locations encoded from different perspectives in the same physical environments are integrated into a single spatial representation. Overall, our findings, coupled with those from other studies, suggest that separate spatial representations are maintained in memory.