Spatial frameworks in imagined navigation

Abstract

The spatial framework model proposes that people use the extensions of their body axes as a reference frame for encoding spatial layouts in memory, and that the physical and functional properties of our bodies and the world determine the accessibility of egocentric locations from memory representations. The present experiment provides evidence that spatial framework results can be obtained even with perceptual scenes that contain no objects to be held in memory. Using a paradigm in which participants interpreted direction and distance information to follow a mental path within a checkerboard grid, the present study shows that spatial framework results are obtained when reasoning occurs from a perspective that is misaligned with respect to the physical reference frame of the participant The theoretical implications of these results are discussed. Copyright 2006 Psychonomic Society, Inc.