Ageing and Dementia Research Centre, Bournemouth University, Bournemouth, UK.
Department of Psychology, Bournemouth University, Bournemouth, UK.
Atten Percept Psychophys. 2021 Jul;83(5):2033-2051. doi: 10.3758/s13414-021-02243-y. Epub 2021 Mar 15.
The aim of the current study was to develop a novel task that allows for the quick assessment of spatial memory precision with minimal technical and training requirements. In this task, participants memorized the position of an object in a virtual room and then judged from a different perspective, whether the object has moved to the left or to the right. Results revealed that participants exhibited a systematic bias in their responses that we termed the reversed congruency effect. Specifically, they performed worse when the camera and the object moved in the same direction than when they moved in opposite directions. Notably, participants responded correctly in almost 100% of the incongruent trials, regardless of the distance by which the object was displaced. In Experiment 2, we showed that this effect cannot be explained by the movement of the object on the screen, but that it relates to the perspective shift and the movement of the object in the virtual world. We also showed that the presence of additional objects in the environment reduces the reversed congruency effect such that it no longer predicts performance. In Experiment 3, we showed that the reversed congruency effect is greater in older adults, suggesting that the quality of spatial memory and perspective-taking abilities are critical. Overall, our results suggest that this effect is driven by difficulties in the precise encoding of object locations in the environment and in understanding how perspective shifts affect the projected positions of the objects in the two-dimensional image.
本研究旨在开发一种新任务，该任务可在最小的技术和训练要求下快速评估空间记忆精度。在该任务中，参与者记忆虚拟房间中物体的位置，然后从不同的视角判断物体是否向左或向右移动。结果表明，参与者的反应存在系统性偏差，我们称之为反转一致性效应。具体来说，当相机和物体朝着相同的方向移动时，他们的表现比相反方向移动时更差。值得注意的是，无论物体移动的距离如何，参与者在几乎 100%的不一致试验中都做出了正确的反应。在实验 2 中，我们表明，这种效应不能用屏幕上物体的移动来解释，而是与视角的转变以及物体在虚拟世界中的移动有关。我们还表明，环境中存在其他物体可以减少反转一致性效应，使其不再预测性能。在实验 3 中，我们表明，老年人的反转一致性效应更大，这表明空间记忆和视角能力的质量至关重要。总的来说，我们的结果表明，这种效应是由环境中物体位置的精确编码以及理解视角转换如何影响二维图像中物体的投影位置的困难所驱动的。
