ABSTRACT

The topography of the land provides a suite of spatial information for navigation. In an outdoor field experiment, we examined terrain slant as a nonvisual cue. Without being told which cue to use, blindfolded, sighted participants completed a place-learning task in a flat and a slanted site. Errors were significantly smaller in the slanted site. Furthermore, performance in the slanted – but not flat – site was significantly better than expected if guessing the target’s direction. This suggests that proprioceptive/kinesthetic and vestibular cues from the slant were spontaneously used for place-learning, albeit with lower accuracy compared to visual cues. Terrain slope might be an environmental cue that is salient and realistically used by blind and sighted persons.

摘要

土地的地形为导航提供了一套空间信息。在户外现场实验中，我们将地形倾斜作为非视觉线索进行了检查。在没有被告知使用哪种线索的情况下，被蒙住眼睛、视力正常的参与者在平坦和倾斜的地点完成了地方学习任务。倾斜站点中的错误明显更小。此外，如果猜测目标的方向，倾斜（但不是平坦）站点的性能明显好于预期。这表明来自倾斜的本体感觉/动觉和前庭线索自发地用于位置学习，尽管与视觉线索相比准确性较低。地形坡度可能是一种环境线索，盲人和视力正常的人都可以实际使用它。