Route navigating without place recognition: what is recognised in recognition-triggered responses?

The use of landmark information in a route-navigation task has been investigated in a virtual environment. After learning a route, subjects were released at intermediate points along the route and asked to indicate the next movement direction required to continue the route. At each decision point, three landmarks were present, one of which was viewed centrally and two which appeared in the periphery of the visual field when approaching the decision point. In the test phase, landmarks could be replaced either within or across places. If all landmarks combined into a new place had been associated with the same movement direction during training, subjects performed as in the control condition. This indicates that they did not need to recognise places as configurations of landmarks. If, however, landmarks that had been associated with conflicting movement directions during training were combined, subjects' performance was reduced. We conclude that local views and objects are recognised individually and that the associated directions are combined in a voting scheme. No evidence was found for a recognition of places as panoramic views or configurations of objects.