School of Psychology and Counselling, Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Brisbane, Australia.
School of Psychology, Bond University, Gold Coast, Australia.
Psychon Bull Rev. 2023 Jun;30(3):822-842. doi: 10.3758/s13423-022-02216-8. Epub 2022 Nov 18.
Path integration is a process in which navigators estimate their position and orientation relative to a known location by using body-based internal sensory cues that arise from navigation-related bodily motion (e.g., vestibular and proprioceptive signals). Although humans are capable of navigating via path integration in small-scale space, a question has been raised as to whether path integration plays any role in human navigation in large-scale space because it is inherently prone to accumulating error. In this review, we examined whether there is evidence that path integration contributes to large-scale human navigation. It was found that navigation with path integration (e.g., walking in a large-scale environment) can enhance learning of the layout of the environment as compared with mere exposure to the environment without path integration (e.g., viewing a walk-through video while sitting), suggesting that the body-based cues are reliably processed and encoded through path integration when they are present during navigation. This facilitatory effect is clearer when proprioceptive cues are available than when the navigators receive vestibular cues only (e.g., driving or being pushed in a wheelchair). More specifically, path integration with proprioceptive cues may help build survey knowledge of the environment in which metric distance and direction between landmarks are represented. Overall, the existing data are indicative of path integration's contributions to large-scale navigation. This suggests that instead of dismissing it as too error-prone, path integration should be characterised as a fundamental mechanism of human navigation irrespective of the scale of a space in which it is carried out.
路径整合是一种过程,导航者通过使用源自与导航相关的身体运动的基于身体的内部感觉线索(例如,前庭和本体感觉信号)来估计相对于已知位置的位置和方向。尽管人类能够在小范围内通过路径整合进行导航,但人们提出了一个问题,即路径整合是否在大范围内的人类导航中发挥作用,因为它本身容易累积误差。在这篇综述中,我们研究了是否有证据表明路径整合有助于人类的大尺度导航。结果发现,与没有路径整合的环境暴露(例如,在坐着的情况下观看全景视频)相比,通过路径整合进行导航(例如,在大环境中行走)可以增强对环境布局的学习,这表明当身体线索在导航过程中存在时,它们会通过路径整合得到可靠地处理和编码。当仅提供前庭线索(例如,驾驶或被推轮椅)时,与提供本体感觉线索相比,这种促进作用更为明显。更具体地说,具有本体感觉线索的路径整合可能有助于建立对环境的调查知识,其中地标之间的度量距离和方向得到表示。总体而言,现有数据表明路径整合对大尺度导航有贡献。这表明,不应因其误差太大而将其排除在外,而应将路径整合视为人类导航的基本机制,而不论其进行的空间范围如何。