Orientation Specificity in Long-Term-Memory for Environmental Spaces

This study examined orientation specificity in long-term human memory for environmental spaces. Twenty participants learned an immersive virtual environment by walking a multi-segment route in one direction. The environment consisted of seven corridors within which target objects were located. In the testing phase, participants were teleported to different locations in the environment and were asked to identify their location and heading and then point towards previously learned targets. As predicted by viewdependent theory, participants pointed more accurately when oriented in the direction in which they originally learned each corridor. No support was found for a global reference direction underlying the memory of the whole layout or for an exclusive orientation-independent memory. We propose a “network of reference frames” theory to integrate elements of the different theoretical positions.