Basso, D.
Faculty of Education, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano
Visuospatial planning is a particular kind of planning, studied using the Traveling Salesperson Problem (TSP). In this 2D task, perceptual data are expected to heavily influence the choice of the trajectory in order to visit all the locations using the shortest path. However, personal traits such as egocentrism and allocentrism were not considered yet into computational models that tried to explain human performance. In this study, 30 trials (representing an open version of the TSP) were administered to 60 healthy participants, which were required to connect 5 up to 10 points within a 2D square by finding the shortest path. Each trial was built placing the dots according to a mathematical function except for one dot, which was far away from the other ones. Results showed that the external dots were included into the figures by using either a horizontal or a vertical heuristic (as described in Basso, 2005). This performance was mainly dependent on their ego-allocentric score, while the real shortest path was partially relevant for the choice of allocentric people only. These results may not be explained by purely syntactic models (such as crossing-avoidance or pyramid approaches) but could be interpreted within the 4-stages planning model.