Transport makes cities: transit maps as major cognitive frames of metropolitan areas.

Spatial representations play a fundamental role in navigation, decision-making, and overall interaction with our environments. Understanding how individuals construct and use them holds significant importance in spatial cognition research, and even bears practical implications for urban planning as it can explain how we interact with the spaces we inhabit. In large urban areas, transit maps stand as prominent visual aids, guiding people through public transportation systems. These maps, while designed for navigational purposes, may influence how individuals perceive and represent their cities. For instance, Vertesi (Social Studies of Science 38:09-35, 2008) showed through a series of interviews including a "sketch mapping" phase, that London Tube Map seems to structure residents' spatial representation of their city. However, thorough quantitative research on this subject have not been carried out yet. Two experimental studies have been conducted to demonstrate how residents' representations of metropolitan areas closely resemble the schematic representations of their public transport networks. First, we show that residents of Greater Paris-public and private transport users alike-plot city landmarks in a layout more closely resembling that of the Parisian transit map than the geographical map. Next, we asked Greater Berlin, London and Paris residents to place landmarks of their cities on different map backgrounds. A similar procedure was followed for landmarks from an unknown city, after a dedicated learning phase. For known cities, the sketch maps produced were closer to transit maps than to the geographical ones, although less so if the test map background presented topographical elements (e.g., rivers, etc.). For learnt cities, participants' sketch maps were almost exclusively dependent on the map provided during the learning phase. These results suggest that familiarity with transit maps has a direct impact on the metric properties of spatial representation in memory, a phenomenon we propose to call the 'schema effect'.

"Run to the hills": Specific contributions of anticipated energy expenditure during active spatial learning.

Grounded views of cognition consider that space perception is shaped by the body and its potential for action. These views are substantiated by observations such as the distance-on-hill effect, described as the overestimation of visually perceived uphill distances. An interpretation of this phenomenon is that slanted distances are overestimated because of the integration of energy expenditure cues. The visual perceptual processes involved are, however, usually tackled through explicit estimation tasks in passive situations. The goal of this study was to consider instead more ecological active spatial processing. Using immersive virtual reality and an omnidirectional treadmill, we investigated the effect of anticipated implicit physical locomotion cost by comparing spatial learning for uphill and downhill routes, while maintaining actual physical cost and walking speed constant. In the first experiment, participants learnt city layouts by exploring uphill or downhill routes. They were then tested using a landmark positioning task on a map. In the second experiment, the same protocol was used with participants who wore loaded ankle weights. The results from the first experiment showed that walking uphill routes led to a global underestimation of distances compared with downhill routes. This inverted distance-of-hill effect was not observed in the second experiment, where an additional effort was applied. These results suggest that the underestimation of distances observed in Experiment 1 emerged from recalibration processes whose function was to solve the transgression of proprioceptive predictions linked with uphill energy expenditure. The results are discussed in relation to constructivist approaches on spatial representations and predictive coding theories.

Crossing hands behind your back reduces recall of manual action sentences and alters brain dynamics.

The embodied meaning approach posits that understanding action-related language recruits motor processes in the brain. However, the functional impact of these motor processes on cognition has been questioned. The present study aims to provide new electrophysiological (EEG) evidence concerning the role of motor processes in the comprehension and memory of action language. Participants read lists of sentences including manual-action or attentional verbs, while keeping their hands either in front of them or crossing them behind their back. Results showed that posture impacted selectively the processing of manual action sentence, and not of attentional sentences, in three different ways: 1) EEG fronto-central beta rhythms, a signature of motor processes, were desynchronized while reading action sentences in the hands-in-front posture compared to the hands-behind posture. The estimated source was the posterior cingulate cortex, involved in proprioceptive regulation. 2) Recall of nouns associated with manual sentences decreased when learning occurred in the hands-behind posture. 3) ERPs analysis revealed that the initial posture at learning modulates neural processes during subsequent recall of manual sentences in the left superior frontal gyrus, which is related to motor processes. These results provide decisive evidence for the functional involvement of embodied simulations in the encoding and retrieval of action-related language.

Aging and posture in the memory of manipulable objects.

Thirty healthy elderly participants (mean age = 77.3) learned the names of manipulable and nonmanipulable objects while adopting a control posture (hands in front of them) or an interfering posture (holding their hands behind their back). Results on a recall task showed a postural interference (PI) effect, with the interfering posture reducing the memory of manipulable objects, but not of nonmanipulable ones. The effect was similar to the Postural Interference effect previously observed in young adults, although with a lower performance. These results call into question the embodied theory hypothesis that the deterioration of memory in aging is related to the decline of the sensorimotor system.

"Walk this way": specific contributions of active walking to the encoding of metric properties during spatial learning.

The effect of body-based information on spatial memory has been traditionally described as a facilitating factor for large-scale spatial learning in the field of active learning research (Chrastil & Warren, Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 19(1):1-23; 2012). The specific contribution of body-based information to spatial representation properties is however not yet well defined and the mechanisms through which body-based information contributes to spatial learning are not clear enough. To disambiguate the effect of active spatial learning on the quality of spatial representations from the beneficial effect of physiological arousal, we compared four experimental conditions (walking on a unidirectional treadmill during learning, retrieval, both phases or no walking). Results showed no effect of the walking condition for a route perspective task, but a significant effect on a survey perspective task (landmark positioning on a map): participants who walked during encoding (encoding group and encoding + retrieval group) obtained better results than those who did not walk or walked only during retrieval. Geometrical analysis of spatial positions on maps revealed that the activity of walking during encoding improves the correlation between participants' coordinates and actual coordinates through better distance estimations and angular accuracy, even though the optic flow was not matched with individual walking speed. Control group variance in all measures was higher than that of the walking groups (regardless of the moment of walking). Taken together, these results provide arguments for the multimodal nature of spatial representations, where body-related information derived from walking is involved in metric properties accuracy and perspective switching.

The Postural Effect on the Memory of Manipulable Objects.

The grounded cognition approach posits the involvement of sensory-motor processes in the representation of knowledge. However, the functional impact of these processes on cognition has been questioned, and some authors have explored the effect of motor interference on memory to test causally this hypothesis. In a seminal study, Dutriaux and Gyselinck (2016) showed that keeping the hands behind the back during learning decreases the memory of manipulable objects, but not the memory of nonmanipulable objects. The aim of this paper is to shed light on the mechanism behind the effect of posture in memory observed by Dutriaux and Gyselinck. The present experiment replicated the posture manipulation during learning but asked participants to keep their hands behind the back during recall. Results showed a similar detrimental effect of the hands behind the back specific to manipulable objects. This shows that the mechanism behind this effect arises from postural interference rather than from a compatibility between the posture during learning and the posture during recall and adds new evidence in favor of the sensory-motor grounding of knowledge.

Difficulties and Problem-Solving Strategies in Wayfinding Among Adults With Cognitive Disabilities: A Look at the Bigger Picture.

Many people with cognitive disabilities avoid outside activities, apparently for fear of getting lost. However, little is known about the nature of the difficulties encountered and the ways in which these individuals deal with them. None of the few studies on wayfinding by people with cognitive disabilities have explored the various specific difficulties they meet in everyday life. Using both a qualitative and quantitative methodology, this study aimed at profiling the types of difficulties encountered in urban mobility and the associated problem-solving strategies. In order to provide more direct evidence from the field, we conducted semi-structured interviews using the critical incident technique (Flanagan, 1954). Among the 66 participants interviewed, 44 had cognitive disabilities and 22 were matched controls. The analysis of the transcripts showed in particular an overall reduced autonomy in problem-solving strategies for people with a cognitive disability. The multiple correspondence analysis highlighted three main types of complex situations, covering a comprehensive range of complex situations that are met in everyday life by these individuals. Results also indicated that people with cognitive disabilities request assistance from another person more frequently when a complex event occurs. These situations are discussed as potential cues for improvements in navigational aids. Conclusions and perspectives are provided to improve wayfinding among people with cognitive disabilities.

How to change your memory of an object with a posture and a verb.

According to grounded cognition, the format of representation of knowledge is sensorimotor. This means that long-term memory shares processing resources with the sensorimotor system. The main objective of this work is to provide new evidence in favour of two claims from the embodied cognition framework: (1) memory is grounded on the sensorimotor system, that is, memory shares processing resources with the sensorimotor system, and (2) memory serves at least in part to support action. For this purpose, the present experiment aimed to show that the action context modulates the motor simulation and, consequently, the memory of manipulable objects. Participants were presented with short phrases comprising the name of a manipulable object, and an action verb ("To take a cup") or an attentional verb ("To see a cup"). During this phase, they had to put their hands in front of them in the control condition, whereas they had to keep them behind their back in the interfering condition. A cued recall test followed after a short distractive letter-matching task, with the verbs serving as cues. Results showed that memory of the words denoting manipulable objects was impaired by the interfering posture when associated with an action verb, but not when associated with an attentional verb. This suggests that a context which does not favour action interferes with motor simulation and thus decreases the memory of manipulable objects. These results provide strong evidence for a grounded account of memory and language.

The Integration of Realistic Episodic Memories Relies on Different Working Memory Processes: Evidence from Virtual Navigation.

Memory is one of the most important cognitive functions in a person's life as it is essential for recalling personal memories and performing many everyday tasks. Although a huge number of studies have been conducted in the field, only a few of them investigated memory in realistic situations, due to methodological issues. The various tools that have been developed using virtual environments (VEs) have gained popularity in cognitive psychology and neuropsychology because they enable to create naturalistic and controlled situations, and are thus particularly adapted to the study of episodic memory (EM), for which an ecological evaluation is of prime importance. EM is the conscious recollection of personal events combined with their phenomenological and spatiotemporal encoding contexts. Using an original paradigm in a VE, the objective of the present study was to characterize the construction of episodic memories. While the concept of working memory has become central in the understanding of a wide range of cognitive functions, its role in the integration of episodic memories has seldom been assessed in an ecological context. This experiment aimed at filling this gap by studying how EM is affected by concurrent tasks requiring working memory resources in a realistic situation. Participants navigated in a virtual town and had to memorize as many elements in their spatiotemporal context as they could. During learning, participants had either to perform a concurrent task meant to prevent maintenance through the phonological loop, or a task aimed at preventing maintenance through the visuospatial sketchpad, or no concurrent task. EM was assessed in a recall test performed after learning through various scores measuring the what, where and when of the memories. Results showed that, compared to the control condition with no concurrent task, the prevention of maintenance through the phonological loop had a deleterious impact only on the encoding of central elements. By contrast, the prevention of visuo-spatial maintenance interfered both with the encoding of the temporal context and with the binding. These results suggest that the integration of realistic episodic memories relies on different working memory processes that depend on the nature of the traces.

The role of visual and spatial working memory in forming mental models derived from survey and route descriptions.

This study examines the involvement of spatial and visual working memory (WM) in the construction of flexible spatial models derived from survey and route descriptions. Sixty young adults listened to environment descriptions, 30 from a survey perspective and the other 30 from a route perspective, while they performed spatial (spatial tapping [ST]) and visual (dynamic visual noise [DVN]) secondary tasks - believed to overload the spatial and visual working memory (WM) components, respectively - or no secondary task (control, C). Their mental representations of the environment were tested by free recall and a verification test with both route and survey statements. Results showed that, for both recall tasks, accuracy was worse in the ST than in the C or DVN conditions. In the verification test, the effect of both ST and DVN was a decreasing accuracy for sentences testing spatial relations from the opposite perspective to the one learnt than if the perspective was the same; only ST had a stronger interference effect than the C condition for sentences from the opposite perspective from the one learnt. Overall, these findings indicate that both visual and spatial WM, and especially the latter, are involved in the construction of perspective-flexible spatial models.

Route planning with transportation network maps: an eye-tracking study.

Planning routes using transportation network maps is a common task that has received little attention in the literature. Here, we present a novel eye-tracking paradigm to investigate psychological processes and mechanisms involved in such a route planning. In the experiment, participants were first presented with an origin and destination pair before we presented them with fictitious public transportation maps. Their task was to find the connecting route that required the minimum number of transfers. Based on participants' gaze behaviour, each trial was split into two phases: (1) the search for origin and destination phase, i.e., the initial phase of the trial until participants gazed at both origin and destination at least once and (2) the route planning and selection phase. Comparisons of other eye-tracking measures between these phases and the time to complete them, which depended on the complexity of the planning task, suggest that these two phases are indeed distinct and supported by different cognitive processes. For example, participants spent more time attending the centre of the map during the initial search phase, before directing their attention to connecting stations, where transitions between lines were possible. Our results provide novel insights into the psychological processes involved in route planning from maps. The findings are discussed in relation to the current theories of route planning.

Learning Is Better with the Hands Free: The Role of Posture in the Memory of Manipulable Objects.

Grounded cognition proposes that memory shares processing resources with sensorimotor systems. The aim of the present study was to show that motor simulation participates in the conceptual representation of manipulable objects in long-term memory. In two experiments, lists of manipulable and nonmanipulable objects were presented. Participants were instructed to memorize the items while adopting different postures. In the control condition, they had to keep their hands at rest in front of them. In the interference condition, participants had to keep their hands crossed behind their back to make their hands less free for action. After each list, participants had to perform first a distractive task, and then an oral free recall. The results showed that the interfering posture produced a specific decrease in the recall of manipulable objects, but not of nonmanipulable ones. This decrease was similar when the items were presented as pictures (Experiment 1) or as words (Experiment 2), thus excluding a purely visual effect. These results provide strong evidence that the motor simulation plays a role in the memory trace of the object.

[Learning virtual routes: what does verbal coding do in working memory?]. / Apprentissage d'itinéraires virtuels: Quel codage verbal en mémoire de travail?

Two experiments were run to complete our understanding of the role of verbal and visuospatial encoding in the construction of a spatial model from visual input. In experiment 1 a dual task paradigm was applied to young adults who learned a route in a virtual environment and then performed a series of nonverbal tasks to assess spatial knowledge. Results indicated that landmark knowledge as asserted by the visual recognition of landmarks was not impaired by any of the concurrent task. Route knowledge, assessed by recognition of directions, was impaired both by a tapping task and a concurrent articulation task. Interestingly, the pattern was modulated when no landmarks were available to perform the direction task. A second experiment was designed to explore the role of verbal coding on the construction of landmark and route knowledge. A lexical-decision task was used as a verbal-semantic dual task, and a tone decision task as a nonsemantic auditory task. Results show that these new concurrent tasks impaired differently landmark knowledge and route knowledge. Results can be interpreted as showing that the coding of route knowledge could be grounded on both a coding of the sequence of events and on a semantic coding of information. These findings also point on some limits of Baddeley's working memory model.

Landmark and route knowledge in children's spatial representation of a virtual environment.

This study investigates the development of landmark and route knowledge in complex wayfinding situations. It focuses on how children (aged 6, 8, and 10 years) and young adults (n = 79) indicate, recognize, and bind landmarks and directions in both verbal and visuo-spatial tasks after learning a virtual route. Performance in these tasks is also related to general verbal and visuo-spatial abilities as assessed by independent standardized tests (attention, working memory, perception of direction, production and comprehension of spatial terms, sentences and stories). The results first show that the quantity and quality of landmarks and directions produced and recognized by participants in both verbal and visuo-spatial tasks increased with age. In addition, an increase with age was observed in participants' selection of decisional landmarks (i.e., landmarks associated with a change of direction), as well as in their capacity to bind landmarks and directions. Our results support the view that children first acquire landmark knowledge, then route knowledge, as shown by their late developing ability to bind knowledge of directions and landmarks. Overall, the quality of verbal and visuo-spatial information in participants' spatial representations was found to vary mostly with their visuo-spatial abilities (attention and perception of directions) and not with their verbal abilities. Interestingly, however, when asked to recognize landmarks encountered during the route, participants show an increasing bias with age toward choosing a related landmark of the same category, regardless of its visual characteristics, i.e., they incorrectly choose the picture of another fountain. The discussion highlights the need for further studies to determine more precisely the role of verbal and visuo-spatial knowledge and the nature of how children learn to represent and memorize routes.

Considering spatial ability in virtual route learning in early aging.

The aim of this study is to broaden our understanding of the construction and early decline of spatial mental representations in route learning, considering the extent to which spatial ability and age-related differences in environment learning interact. The experiment examines spatial mental representation derived from taking a realistic route acquired using virtual environment and compares individuals different in age but with similar spatial ability. A sample of 34 young (20-30 years) and 30 middle-aged (50-60 years) females with good mental rotation ability were chosen. Participants learned a complex route through its presentation in a virtual environment and then performed a series of tasks (landmark recognition, location of landmarks and verification of spatial relations). Results show that the two participant age groups had similar performance in landmark recognition task and in verification of sentences describing direct spatial relations; instead, the middle-aged group showed a poorer performance than younger in their ability to locate landmarks and to judge the truth of indirect spatial sentences. These results first suggest that spatial abilities have to be seriously considered to avoid any confusion with age, as age-related differences are attenuated when individuals are different in age but similar in spatial ability. Second they confirm a specific difficulty of older participants to handle spatial information in a global configuration.

[Effect of aging on real route memorization: the role of working memory and episodic memory]. / Effet du vieillissement sur la mémorisation d'itinéraires réels : l'importance de la mémoire de travail et de la mémoire épisodique.

This research investigates the role of different memory components in the age-related decline of new route learning. Few studies have considered real route learning, for which the situation can be more complex, and the richness greater than with simple mazes. In this experiment, the memory of a route in a real city has been assessed considering visual scene recognition, directions recognition, and temporal order memorization. Thirty young adults (m=25 years old) and 30 older adults (m=70 years old) have watched the video of the route twice before performing the three recognition tasks. Various cognitive abilities (episodic memory, verbal and visuo-spatial working memory, short-term binding, inhibition, flexibility, and mental rotation ability) have then been assessed through different neuropsychological tests. The results demonstrate that older adults have poorer performance than younger in the three route learning tasks: visual scene recognition task, direction recognition task, and temporal order recognition task. Moreover, mediation analyses indicate that episodic memory performance partly explains the effect of aging on visual scene recognition, while working memory capacity performance (measured with Corsi's block test, digit span test, and multimodal span test) partly explains the effect of aging on direction recognition. Spatial memory involved in real navigation and route learning is thus impaired in normal aging, which is partly due to the decline of episodic and working memory components.

Working memory involvement in spatial text processing: what advantages are gained from extended learning and visuo-spatial strategies?

The study investigates the relationships between working memory (WM), amount of learning, and strategies used in spatial description. WM involvement and strategies reported were assumed to change, depending on whether the text learning was extensive or limited. Two experiments were carried out using dual-task paradigm: participants listened to spatial text three times and concurrently one group performed a spatial concurrent task, one group a verbal task (to measure WM involvement), and one group no secondary task. In Experiment 1, participants listened three consecutive times then performed recall tasks (one verbal - verification test; one spatial - graphical representation). In Experiment 2, recall tasks were performed after first and third listening. The strategies used were ascertained through a questionnaire. Results showed that the verification test was impaired by the verbal concurrent task after listening three times (Experiment 1) and after first listening (Experiment 2). The graphical representation performance was impaired by verbal and spatial concurrent tasks, detected only after listening three times, not after a single time (Experiments 1 and 2). The strategies most used were visuo-spatial; their relationship with WM changes as a function of number of times of listening. Overall, the results showed that extensive learning allows construction of a spatial mental representation that is modulated by WM and strategies.

Age effect on components of episodic memory and feature binding: A virtual reality study.

OBJECTIVE: The aims were (1) to explore the effects of normal aging on the main aspects of episodic memory--what, where, and when,--and on feature binding in a virtual environment; (2) to explore the influence of the mode of learning, intentional versus incidental; and (3) to benchmark virtual environment findings collected with older adults against data recorded in classical neuropsychological tests. METHOD: We tested a population of 82 young adults and 78 older adults without dementia (they participated in a short battery of neuropsychological tests). All the participants drove a car in an urban virtual environment composing of 9 turns and specific areas. Half of the participants were told to drive through the virtual town; the other half were asked to drive and to memorize the environment (itinerary, elements, etc.). All aspects of episodic memory were then assessed (what, where, when, and binding). RESULTS: The older participants had less recollection of the spatiotemporal context of events than the younger with intentional encoding (p < .001), but similar recollection with incidental encoding (except for verbal spatial aspect). The younger participants showed better binding than older ones regardless of the type of encoding (p < .001). For the older participants the virtual test was sensitive to mnesic complaints as well as general cognitive changes (p < .05 to p < .01). CONCLUSION: We view these results as an indication that virtual environments could provide helpful standard tools for assessing age effects on the main aspects of episodic memory.

Assessing human reorientation ability inside virtual reality environments: the effects of retention interval and landmark characteristics.

The purpose of the present study was to assess the navigational behaviour of adult humans following a disorientation procedure that perturbed their egocentric frame of reference. The assessment was carried out in a virtual reality (VR) environment by manipulating the disorientation procedure, the retention interval, the relative positions of target and landmark. The results of experiment I demonstrated that adding a physical rotation to a virtual disorientation procedure did not yield an additional decrease in searching performance. The results of experiment II showed that shortening the delay between study and test phase decreased the errors more markedly for geometric than landmark ones. An orientation specificity effect due to the manipulation of the relative position between target and landmark was discussed across the experiments. In conclusion, VR seemed to be a valuable method for studying human reorientation. Moreover, the virtual experimental setting involved here promoted knowledge of the relationship between working memory and spatial reorientation paradigm.