Gyselinck, V. 1 , Picucci, L. 2 & Bosco, A. 1
1 LPNCog, Université Paris Descartes, CNRS, Boulogne-Billancourt, France
2 University degli Studi di Bari, Bari, Italy
One of the trends of research to explore the nature of our spatial representations is to examine the extend to which they are dependant on the source through which spatial information is acquired. Another related way is to examine the extend to which these spatial representations maintain the perspective in which spatial information was provided. In this study, young adults were assigned to one of the four learning conditions: a tour across a virtual city (visual-route), the verbal description of the navigated environment (verbal-route), the map study (visual-survey) and the verbal description of the map comprising cardinal coordinates (verbal-survey). Results on a statement verification task showed that when spatial information was acquired through a verbal presentation, performance on switched perspective statements was particularly weakened in the route perspective learning condition compared to the survey perspective. In addition, results on a sketch map showed that positioning landmarks was more difficult for participants engaged in a route perspective via a verbal description. When spatial information was provided adopting a survey perspective, locations were correctly reported regardless the format of presentation. These results suggest that the condition under which a spatial representation is perspective-free depends also on the learning format.