Stable Egocentric Representation Acquired from Sequential Proprioceptive Learning

Abstract

In this study thirty two university students (16 men and 16 women) participated in the experiment in return for monetary compensation. Participants stood at a learning position amidst a geometrically irregular 9-object array. Half of them viewed the layout with objects being simultaneously presented, and the other half were blindfolded and led to sequentially walk to each object's location from the learning position (proprioceptive learning). After learning the layout, all the participants were blindfolded and tested in the baseline, updating, and disorientation conditions in sequence. All participants were taken to a room to perform judgments of relative direction (JRDs) among the remembered object locations. The JRDs test included 48 trials, six trials at each of eight imagined headings (0degree to 315degree at 45degree intervals). The dependent measures were the absolute angular error and the latency of the pointing response. The participants' performance on JRDs was indistinguishable for visual learning and proprioceptive learning, which indicated that participants constructed an allocentric spatial representation of equivalent fidelity through visual and proprioceptive learning. In conclusion, the results in the present study provided evidence that participants constructed a stable egocentric representation when they proprioceptively learned the irregular object array. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)