Influences on the first-perspective alignment effect from text route descriptions

Abstract

Four experiments investigated the more efficient recall of routes learned from text descriptions when the imagined orientation at test was in alignment with the first experienced perspective. Experiments 1 and 2 replicated the effect, but found little evidence for the influence of an external frame of reference provided either by describing a salient landmark external to the route, or by employing cardinal directions in the descriptions. In Experiment 3, the first-perspective alignment (FPA) effect was relatively unaffected by elaboration of spatial information or more experience of reading the text. Experiment 4 found attenuation of the FPA effect when participants made active spatial judgements from imagined key locations while learning. The results are discussed in relation to theories of spatial reference frames and the influence of location salience.

Acknowledgments

Diane J. Wildbur is now at the Department of Psychology, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK, and Paul N. Wilson is at the Department of Psychology, University of Hull, Cottingham Road, Hull, HU6 7RX, UK. Support for part of the research was provided by a grant from the United Kingdom Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council to the second author. Some of the work reported here was submitted by Diane J. Wildbur in partial fulfilment of the degree of PhD. We are grateful to Antoinette Hardy for help in running the pilot study on which Experiment 2 was based and to Michael Tlauka and Beverley Roskos-Ewoldsen for helpful advice on an earlier version of this article.

Notes

¹ The same overall pattern of results was obtained in a replication of Experiment 1 in which only the landmark conditions were included (Wildbur, 2004).