Department of Psychology, The George Washington University, 2125 G. Street NW, The George Washington University, Washington, DC 20052, USA.
J Vestib Res. 2009;19(3-4):111-25. doi: 10.3233/VES-2009-0354.
Non-sensory (cognitive) inputs can play a powerful role in monitoring one's self-motion. Previously, we showed that access to spatial memory dramatically increases response precision in an angular self-motion updating task [1]. Here, we examined whether spatial memory also enhances a particular type of self-motion updating - angular path integration. "Angular path integration" refers to the ability to maintain an estimate of self-location after a rotational displacement by integrating internally-generated (idiothetic) self-motion signals over time. It was hypothesized that remembered spatial frameworks derived from vision and spatial language should facilitate angular path integration by decreasing the uncertainty of self-location estimates. To test this we implemented a whole-body rotation paradigm with passive, non-visual body rotations (ranging 40 degrees -140 degrees ) administered about the yaw axis. Prior to the rotations, visual previews (Experiment 1) and verbal descriptions (Experiment 2) of the surrounding environment were given to participants. Perceived angular displacement was assessed by open-loop pointing to the origin (0 degrees ). We found that within-subject response precision significantly increased when participants were provided a spatial context prior to whole-body rotations. The present study goes beyond our previous findings by first establishing that memory of the environment enhances the processing of idiothetic self-motion signals. Moreover, we show that knowledge of one's immediate environment, whether gained from direct visual perception or from indirect experience (i.e., spatial language), facilitates the integration of incoming self-motion signals.
非感觉（认知）输入在自我运动监测中可发挥强大作用。此前，我们发现，获取空间记忆可极大提高在角运动更新任务中的反应精度[1]。在此，我们检验了空间记忆是否也能增强特定类型的自我运动更新——角路径整合。“角路径整合”是指在经历旋转位移后，通过随时间整合内部产生的（自体运动）信号来维持自我位置估计的能力。我们假设，源自视觉和空间语言的记忆空间框架应该通过降低自我位置估计的不确定性，来促进角路径整合。为了验证这一点，我们采用了全身旋转范式，实施被动、无视觉的身体旋转（40 度至 140 度），围绕偏航轴进行。在旋转之前，向参与者提供周围环境的视觉预览（实验 1）和口头描述（实验 2）。通过开环指向原点（0 度）来评估感知的角位移。我们发现，当参与者在全身旋转前提供空间背景时，其个体反应精度显著提高。本研究通过首先确定对环境的记忆增强了自体运动信号的处理，超越了我们之前的发现。此外，我们还表明，对直接视觉感知或间接经验（即空间语言）获得的即时环境的了解，有助于整合传入的自我运动信号。
