Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, George Washington University, 2013 H Street NW, Washington, DC, 20052, USA.
Mem Cognit. 2023 Aug;51(6):1431-1443. doi: 10.3758/s13421-023-01398-3. Epub 2023 Jan 30.
An observer often remembers an object's location on the basis of its direction and distance from reference objects. Two kinds of reference object are of particular interest: landmarks and boundaries. We compared how well observers remembered the direction and distance of target objects from a landmark and a boundary. Patterns of variable error implied that the landmark was more effective than the boundary in supporting memory for target object direction. When the predictions of the landmark and the boundary were placed in conflict, patterns of constant error implied that the boundary was more effective than the landmark in supporting memory for target object distance. These results suggest affinities between direction information and landmarks and between distance information and boundaries. They raise the possibility that, rather than collapsing across direction and distance error, theoretical analyses should distinguish the two kinds of error in assessing the reliability of landmarks and boundaries.
观察者通常根据目标物体与参考物体之间的方向和距离来记住其位置。两种参考物体特别引人关注：地标和边界。我们比较了观察者记住来自地标和边界的目标物体的方向和距离的能力。可变误差模式表明，地标在支持目标物体方向的记忆方面比边界更有效。当地标和边界的预测发生冲突时，恒定误差模式表明，边界在支持目标物体距离的记忆方面比地标更有效。这些结果表明，方向信息与地标之间以及距离信息与边界之间存在相似性。它们提出了一种可能性，即在评估地标和边界的可靠性时，理论分析不应将方向和距离误差混为一谈，而应区分这两种误差。
