Moderating the route angularity effect in a virtual environment: support for a dual memory representation.

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Spatial Navigation
• Human Memory

Background:

• The route angularity effect describes how increased path turns lead to overestimations of environmental distance.
• Existing research suggests memory plays a role in this phenomenon, but specific mechanisms remain unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate memory-based explanations for the route angularity effect.
• To examine how memory load and retrieval difficulty influence distance estimation in virtual environments.

Main Methods:

• Participants navigated virtual paths with varying numbers of turns (0, 2, or 7).
• Distance estimations were made after sets of paths.
• Memory load was manipulated during navigation, and retrieval difficulty was increased by interpolating a spatial task before estimation.

Main Results:

• Both increased memory load during navigation and delayed retrieval significantly amplified the route angularity effect.
• These findings indicate that memory limitations enhance the impact of path turns on perceived distance.

Conclusions:

• The route angularity effect appears to be mediated by a categorical memory heuristic for the number of turns.
• This heuristic becomes more prominent when detailed spatial memory for actual route distance is compromised during encoding or retrieval.