Authors: Daniele Nardi Corinne A Holmes Nora S Newcombe Steven M Weisberg
Publish Date: 2015/07/28
Volume: 16, Issue: 1, Pages: 323-326
Abstract
Unlike most of the spatial cues that have received attention a sloping terrain can be perceived by multimodal sensory inputs vision balance and kinesthesia making it potentially very salient for navigation Furthermore a homogeneous slope can be used like a compass to identify directions eg uphill downhill and sideways but not to determine distances We briefly review recent evidence on navigation with slope emphasizing two main findings On the one hand we focus on the conspicuous sex difference found in the ability to localize a target in a square tilted enclosure this has emerged in human adults and children and we suggest that it is related to lower awareness of the slope for females On the other hand we describe the general pattern of errors that arises when localizing the target during the task these errors indicate the use of a bicoordinate representation of the slope Limitations and ideas for future studies are proposed
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