Collaborating in spatial tasks: Partners adapt the perspective of their descriptions, coordination strategies, and memory representations.

The partner’s viewpoint influences spatial descriptions and, when strongly emphasized, spatial memories as well. We examined whether partnerspecific information affects the representations people spontaneously construct, the description strategies they spontaneously select, and the representations their collaborating partner constructs based on these descriptions. Directors described to a misaligned Matcher arrays learned while either knowing the Matcher’s viewpoint or not. Knowing the Matcher’s viewpoint led to distinctive processing in spatial judgments and a rotational bias in array drawings. Directors’ descriptions reflected strategic choices, suggesting that partners considered each other’s computational demands. Such strategies were effective as reflected by the number of conversational turns partners took to coordinate. Matchers represented both partners’ viewpoints in memory, with the Directors’ descriptions predicting the facilitated perspective. Thus, partners behave contingently in spatial tasks to optimize their coordination: the availability of the partner’s viewpoint influences one’s memory and description strategies, which in turn influence the partner’s memory

Social and representational cues jointly influence spatial perspective-taking.

We examined how social cues (the conversational partner’s viewpoint) and representational ones (the intrinsic structure of a spatial layout) jointly shape people’s spatial memory representations and their subsequent descriptions. In 24 pairs, Directors studied an array with a symmetrical structure while either knowing their Matcher’s subsequent viewpoint or not. During the subsequent description of the array, the array’s intrinsic structure was aligned with the Director, the Matcher, or neither partner. According to memory tests preceding descriptions, Directors who had studied the array while aligned with its structure were more likely to use its orientation as an organizing direction. Directors who had studied the array while misaligned with its structure used its orientation more frequently as an organizing orientation when knowing that the Matcher would be aligned with it, but used their own viewpoint more frequently as an organizing direction when not knowing the Matcher’s viewpoint. Directors also adapted their descriptions strategically, using more egocentric expressions when aligned with the intrinsic structure and more partner-centered expressions when their Matchers were the ones aligned with the structure, even when this information wasn’t available in advance. These findings suggest that speakers are guided by converging social and representational cues to adapt flexibly the organization of their memories and the perspectives of their descriptions

What's so difficult with adopting imagined perspectives?

Research on spatial cognition suggests that transformation processes and/or spatial conflicts may influence performance on mental perspective-taking tasks. However, conflicting findings have complicated our understanding about the processes involved in perspectivetaking, particularly those giving rise to angular disparity effects, whereby performance worsens as the imagined perspective adopted deviates from one’s actual perspective. Based on data from experiments involving mental perspective- taking in immediate and remote spatial layouts, we propose here a novel account for the difficulty with perspective-taking. According to this account, the main difficulty lies in maintaining an imagined perspective in working memory, especially in the presence of salient sensorimotor information

The protagonist's first perspective influences the encoding of spatial information in narratives

Three experiments examined the first-perspective alignment effect that is observed when retrieving spatial information from memory about described environments. Participants read narratives that described the viewpoint of a protagonist in fictitious environments and then pointed to the memorized locations of described objects from imagined perspectives. Results from Experiments 1 and 2 showed that performance was best when participants responded from the protagonist’s first perspective even though object locations were described from a different perspective. In Experiment 3, in which participants were physically oriented with the perspective used to describe object locations, performance from that description perspective was better than that from the protagonist’s first perspective, which was, in turn, better than performance from other perspectives. These findings suggest that when reading narratives, people default to using a reference frame that is aligned with their own facing direction, although physical movement may facilitate retrieval from other perspectives

Integration of spatial relations across perceptual experiences.

People often carry out tasks that entail coordinating spatial information encoded in temporally and/or spatially distinct perceptual experiences. Much research has been conducted to determine whether such spatial information is integrated into a single spatial representation or whether it is kept in separate representations that can be related at the time of retrieval. Here, we review the existing literature on the integration of spatial information and present results from a new experiment aimed at examining whether locations encoded from different perspectives in the same physical environments are integrated into a single spatial representation. Overall, our findings, coupled with those from other studies, suggest that separate spatial representations are maintained in memory

When gestures show us the way: Co-speech gestures selectively facilitate navigation and spatial memory.

How does gesturing during route learning relate to subsequent spatial performance? We examined the relationship between gestures produced spontaneously while studying route directions and spatial representations of the navigated environment. Participants studied route directions, then navigated those routes from memory in a virtual environment, and finally had their memory of the environment assessed. We found that, for navigators with low spatial perspective-taking performance on the Spatial Orientation Test, more gesturing from a survey perspective predicted more accurate memory following navigation. Thus, co-thought gestures accompanying route learning relate to performance selectively, depending on the gesturers’ spatial ability and the perspective of their gestures. Survey gestures may help some individuals visualize an overall route that they can retain in memory

The conversational partner's perspective affects spatial memory and descriptions.

We examined whether people spontaneously represent the partner’s viewpoint in spatial memory when it is available in advance and whether they adapt their spontaneous descriptions accordingly. In 18 pairs, Directors studied arrays of objects while: (1) not knowing about having to describe the array to a Matcher, (2) knowing about the subsequent description, and (3) knowing the Matcher’s subsequent viewpoint, which was offset by 90, 135, or 180. In memory tests preceding descriptions, Directors represented the Matcher’s viewpoint when it was known during study, taking longer to imagine orienting to perspectives aligned with it and rotating their drawings of arrays toward it. Conversely, when Directors didn’t know their Matcher’s viewpoint, they encoded arrays egocentrically, being faster to imagine orienting to and to respond from perspectives aligned with their own. Directors adapted their descriptions flexibly, using partner-centered spatial expressions more frequently when misaligned by 90 and egocentric ones when misaligned by 135. Knowing their misalignment in advance helped partners recognize when descriptions would be most difficult for Directors (at 135) and to mutually agree on using their perspective. Thus, in collaborative tasks, people don’t rely exclusively on their spatial memory but also use other pertinent perceptual information (e.g., their misalignment from their partner) to assess the computational demands on each partner and select strategies that maximize the efficiency of communication

Virtual Reality and Symptoms Management of Anxiety, Depression, Fatigue, and Pain: A Systematic Review

In recent years, virtual reality (VR) has become an interesting alternative to traditional exposure-based therapies for many symptoms. VR involves immersion in a computer-generated virtual environment that minimizes avoidance and facilitates emotional processing. The objective of this systematic review is to evaluate evidence on the intervention effect of VR on anxiety, depression, fatigue, and pain. The research strategy of this systematic review included three electronic databases (MEDLINE/PubMed, Cochrane Library, and ScienceDirect) based on predetermined inclusion and exclusion criteria. Published quantitative studies from 2000 to 2020 were identified, which examined the effect of VR intervention on four different symptoms related to symptoms experienced by cancer patients. Quality assessments, data extractions, and analysis were completed on all included studies. A total of 882 titles and abstracts were screened, and 23 studies were included in the review. The studies were grouped according to the symptoms: anxiety and depression, fatigue, and pain. The review showed that VR intervention is more effective compared with the control (i.e., standard care) for anxiety, depression, fatigue, and pain. VR can reduce effectively these symptoms in different contexts and diseases, including cancer. The evidence suggests that there is value in exploring this intervention as a potential crossover treatment for these symptoms in patients. This study contributes to evidence that distraction is an effective symptom management mechanism. The findings are congruent with the theoretical framework, supporting the premise that VR, as an emotion-focused distraction intervention, decreases the severity of these symptoms

Sensorimotor alignment effects in the learning environment and in novel environments.

Four experiments investigated the conditions contributing to sensorimotor alignment effects (i.e., the advantage for spatial judgments from imagined perspectives aligned with the body). Through virtual reality technology, participants learned object locations around a room (learning room) and made spatial judgments from imagined perspectives aligned or misaligned with their actual facing direction. Senso-rimotor alignment effects were found when testing occurred in the learning room but not after walking 3 m into a neighboring (novel) room. Sensorimotor alignment effects returned after returning to the learning room or after providing participants with egocentric imagery instructions in the novel room. Additionally, visual and spatial similarities between the test and learning environments were indepen-dently sufficient to cause sensorimotor alignment effects. Memory alignment effects, independent from sensorimotor alignment effects, occurred in all testing conditions. Results are interpreted in the context of two-system spatial memory theories positing separate representations to account for sensorimotor and memory alignment effects