The role of self-to-object updating in orientation-free performance on spatial-memory tasks

A single view of a room-sized path produces an orientation-specific memory representation, yet when memory is tested at a location on the path, orientation-free performance is observed. Either a virtual-views or an updating hypothesis can account for orientation-free performance by attributing it, respectively, to an orientation-free long-term-memory representation or to a working-memory representation of the body's updated location relative to the path. Experiments 1 and 2 test these hypotheses by manipulating the test-site location and the complexity of the trajectory from the study site to the test site. Experiment 3 tests orientation to the test space as a function of trajectory complexity. Results support a virtual-views explanation for the orientation-free performance of males and an updating explanation for females.