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Abstract:
We investigate a paradox in human navigation: since path integration is imprecise, we rely on stable landmarks – but then how do we detect landmark instability? Participants performed a triangle completion task in an ambulatory virtual environment. Landmark stability was manipulated by covertly shifting local landmarks prior to the home-bound leg by an angle randomly sampled from a Gaussian distribution with a SD of 1, 2, or 3 times the SD of path integration. Participants followed the landmarks in the high and medium stability conditions, but not in the low stability condition. Thus, path integration is a very coarse reference system that can only detect highly unstable landmarks, whereas global orientation cues may be more sensitive to landmark stability. We are currently testing whether fixed global orientation cues (virtual mountains 800 m away) improve the detection of landmark instability.
