Avraamides, M. 1 , Galati, A. 1 , Meneghetti, C. 2 , Pazzaglia, F. 2 & Denis, M. 3
1 University of Cyprus
2 University of Padua
3 LIMSI-CNRS Orsay
In two experiments we investigated how spatial information described in narratives is organized in memory. Participants read short stories describing themselves at remote settings (e.g., an opera house) and were asked to memorize the locations of objects in them. Subsequently, they physically rotated to the left or right to match a change of orientation described in the narrative and then pointed towards memorized objects from imagined perspectives. Performance was faster and more accurate when participants pointed to objects from the imagined perspective that was aligned with the initial orientation described in the narrative than any other orientation. This finding suggests that (1) participants maintained spatial information in memory from a preferred direction that was determined by the initial orientation introduced in the narrative, and (2) they did not update this initial spatial memory when physically rotating. Therefore, spatial updating in environments encoded through language vs. through perceptual experience may differ.