Mechanisms of multi-guidance in human navigation

• Applicants: Dr. Norbert Böddeker; Professor Dr. Martin Egelhaaf, since 8/2023
• Subject Area: General, Cognitive and Mathematical Psychology ; Sensory and Behavioural Biology ; Human Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 460373158

The return to a certain place, often over long distances and through complex environments, can be vital for many animals, including humans. Two main sources of information can help guide the journey to a previously visited place: (1) Landmark guidance: features in the environment can serve as potential landmarks; (2) Path integration: by integrating the distances and directions travelled during a journey, one can estimate the direct way home. How do we combine our path integration system with the guidance system based on visual landmarks? And, if so, how do we determine the weighting for the two guidance systems? In the proposed project, we want to investigate the integration of landmark guidance and path integration in environments of different complexity. Earlier studies showed that in the vicinity of the goal people integrate cues according to Bayesian principles near-optimally. We will use an immersive virtual reality setup to quantify, whether and how the use and combination of different guidance systems depends on the structure of the environment and whether and how these combinations change adaptively and systematically over the course of an individual navigation task. The first part of the project deals with the use of distance-dependent integration of guidance systems for navigation. It seems advisable to adapt one’s navigation strategy throughout the journey home, based on the current usefulness of the available cues. However, it is still unclear, whether a specific guidance system is used continuously or only during certain phases of a given journey home. The second part of the project investigates how the visual complexity of the environment influences guidance integration. The guidance system used in a forest probably differs from the one in a meadow with only a single tree. By confronting participants with a range of differently complex virtual environments, we will investigate how visual complexity affects homing strategies.We will, thus, analyse the short-term adaptability of human multi-guidance integration during navigation within different environmental settings (spatial scales and visual complexities) using a comprehensive new approach. Our project will help to fill the knowledge gap about navigation strategies in the intermediate distance range between short range local homing and large-scale navigation and will serve to improve our understanding of the way human navigators adapt their strategies depending on the complexity and abundance of landmarks in the environment to successfully find their way.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Ehemaliger Antragsteller: Dr. Olivier Bertrand, until 7/2023