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Abstract

The usage of landmark information in a route navigation task is 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. Replacement of the landmarks in the test phase did not affect subjects'
performance as long as the direction informations associated with each
landmark and landmark position (left, central, right) during the learning
phase were consistent. Only if landmarks were combined that carried
conflicting movement informations, a reduced performance is observed. We
conclude that local views and objects are recognized 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.