Interacting with objects compresses environmental representations in spatial memory.

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Perception
• Spatial Memory

Background:

• Interaction with objects influences spatial perception, often making them appear closer.
• Previous research focused on single object interactions.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how interacting with multiple objects affects spatial representations of an environment.
• To determine if action-based perceptual distortions extend to multiple objects and environmental boundaries.

Main Methods:

• Participants manually explored or observed multiple-object layouts.
• Memory recall tasks included drawing scaled environments and reconstructing boundaries.
• Experimental designs compared interaction versus observation conditions.

Main Results:

• Manual interaction with multiple objects led to perceptions of compressed distances between objects.
• Participants who interacted with objects reconstructed smaller environmental boundaries.
• These effects were observed in both drawing and reconstruction tasks.

Conclusions:

• Action-based perceptual distortions persist in memory across multiple interactions.
• Interaction compresses spatial representations not only between touched objects but also environmental boundaries.
• This suggests a robust link between motor actions and spatial memory encoding.