In two virtual spatial-navigation experiments, human participants were trained to find a hidden goal (an “internet connection” point) that was located adjacent to one of the right-angled corners of a cross-shaped virtual environment. The location of the goal was defined solely with respect to the geometry of the environmental structure. Training trials started from a single central start location (Experiment 1) or from multiple start locations over two, four or sixteen training trials (Experiment 2). Following training, participants were placed onto the outside of the same environment and asked to again find the connection point (which, unbeknown to participants, was removed) during a single test-trial. The results from both experiments revealed that participants spent more time searching in regions on the outside of the environment that were closest to the location where the hidden goal was position during the previous training stage. In contrast, participants spent very little time searching in regions whose visual appearance matched those regions that contained the hidden goal during training. These results reproduce the findings from previous research which supports the idea of an allocentric encoding of the shape of the environment during navigation, and further implies that this encoding is relatively resilient to manipulations that might be expected to undermine it.

在两个虚拟空间导航实验中，人类参与者接受了培训，以找到位于十字形虚拟环境的直角之一附近的隐藏目标（“互联网连接”点）。目标的位置仅根据环境结构的几何形状来定义。训练试验从单个中心开始位置开始（实验 1）或从多个开始位置开始，经过两次、四次或十六次训练试验（实验 2）。训练结束后，参与者被放置在同一环境的外部，并要求在一次测试期间再次找到连接点（参与者不知道该连接点已被移除）。两个实验的结果表明，参与者花更多的时间在环境外部的区域中搜索，这些区域最靠近前一个训练阶段隐藏目标所在位置的位置。相比之下，参与者很少花时间搜索视觉外观与训练期间包含隐藏目标的区域相匹配的区域。这些结果再现了先前研究的发现，这些发现支持在导航过程中对环境形状进行异中心编码的想法，并进一步暗示这种编码对可能会破坏它的操纵具有相对弹性。参与者花很少的时间搜索视觉外观与训练期间包含隐藏目标的区域相匹配的区域。这些结果再现了先前研究的发现，这些发现支持在导航过程中对环境形状进行异中心编码的想法，并进一步暗示这种编码对可能会破坏它的操纵具有相对弹性。参与者花很少的时间搜索视觉外观与训练期间包含隐藏目标的区域相匹配的区域。这些结果再现了先前研究的发现，这些发现支持在导航过程中对环境形状进行异中心编码的想法，并进一步暗示这种编码对可能会破坏它的操纵具有相对弹性。