The influence of yaw rotation on spatial navigation during development

Measuring spatial navigation during locomotion in children: A systematic review

Spatial navigation allows us to move around our environment, walking being the most advanced form of human locomotion. Over the years, a range of tools has been developed to study spatial navigation in children. Aim. To describe the role of locomotion during the assessment of spatial navigation in children, providing an overview of the instruments available for assessing spatial navigation in typically developing children and those with neurodevelopmental disorders. Methods and Procedures. A systematic search was performed in six electronic databases between December 2022 and February 2023, then updated in July 2023. Cross-sectional and observational studies were included. Outcomes and results. Of the 3,385 studies screened, 47 were selected for this review. Five studies described the influence of locomotion on spatial navigation, and seven studies included locomotion as an explanatory variable in this area. Most studies focused on children from five to twelve years old, whereas only nine were centred on infants and preschoolers. Just eight assessed spatial abilities in individuals with neurodevelopmental disorders. Conclusions and implications. Children with or at risk of neurodevelopmental impairments show poorer spatial navigation skills. Having the choice to actively explore the space is more important than the way they locomote. It is necessary to have tools to assess spatial navigation during locomotion early in infancy.

Methods for measuring egocentric distance perception in visual modality

Egocentric distance perception has been widely concerned by researchers in the field of spatial perception due to its significance in daily life. The frame of perception involves the perceived distance from an observer to an object. Over the years, researchers have been searching for an optimal way to measure the perceived distance and their contribution constitutes a critical aspect of the field. This paper summarizes the methodological findings and divides the measurement methods for egocentric distance perception into three categories according to the behavior types. The first is Perceptional Method, including successive equal-appearing intervals of distance judgment measurement, verbal report, and perceptual distance matching task. The second is Directed Action Method, including blind walking, blind-walking gesturing, blindfolded throwing, and blind rope pulling. The last one is Indirect Action Method, including triangulation-by-pointing and triangulation-by-walking. In the meantime, we summarize each method's procedure, core logic, scope of application, advantages, and disadvantages. In the end, we discuss the future concerns of egocentric distance perception.

How much I moved: Robust biases in self-rotation perception

Vestibular cues are crucial to sense the linear and angular acceleration of our head in three-dimensional space. Previous literature showed that vestibular information precociously combines with other sensory modalities, such as proprioceptive and visual, to facilitate spatial navigation. Recent studies suggest that auditory cues may improve self-motion perception as well. The present study investigated the ability to estimate passive rotational displacements with and without virtual acoustic landmarks to determine how vestibular and auditory information interact in processing self-motion information. We performed two experiments. In both, healthy participants sat on a Rotational-Translational Chair. They experienced yaw rotations along the earth-vertical axis and performed a self-motion discrimination task. Their goal was to estimate both clockwise and counterclockwise rotations’ amplitude, with no visual information available, reporting whether they felt to be rotated more or less than 45°. According to the condition, vestibular-only or audio-vestibular information was present. Between the two experiments, we manipulated the procedure of presentation of the auditory cues (passive vs. active production of sounds). We computed the point of subjective equality (PSE) as a measure of accuracy and the just noticeable difference (JND) as the precision of the estimations for each condition and direction of rotations. Results in both experiments show a strong overestimation bias of the rotations, regardless of the condition, the direction, and the sound generation conditions. Similar to previously found heading biases, this bias in rotation estimation may facilitate the perception of substantial deviations from the most relevant directions in daily navigation activities.

Perceptual Biases as the Side Effect of a Multisensory Adaptive System: Insights from Verticality and Self-Motion Perception

Perceptual biases can be interpreted as adverse consequences of optimal processes which otherwise improve system performance. The review presented here focuses on the investigation of inaccuracies in multisensory perception by focusing on the perception of verticality and self-motion, where the vestibular sensory modality has a prominent role. Perception of verticality indicates how the system processes gravity. Thus, it represents an indirect measurement of vestibular perception. Head tilts can lead to biases in perceived verticality, interpreted as the influence of a vestibular prior set at the most common orientation relative to gravity (i.e., upright), useful for improving precision when upright (e.g., fall avoidance). Studies on the perception of verticality across development and in the presence of blindness show that prior acquisition is mediated by visual experience, thus unveiling the fundamental role of visuo-vestibular interconnections across development. Such multisensory interactions can be behaviorally tested with cross-modal aftereffect paradigms which test whether adaptation in one sensory modality induces biases in another, eventually revealing an interconnection between the tested sensory modalities. Such phenomena indicate the presence of multisensory neural mechanisms that constantly function to calibrate self-motion dedicated sensory modalities with each other as well as with the environment. Thus, biases in vestibular perception reveal how the brain optimally adapts to environmental requests, such as spatial navigation and steady changes in the surroundings.

Reliability of the triangle completion test in the real-world and in virtual reality

Background

The triangle completion test has been used to assess egocentric wayfinding for decades, yet there is little information on its reliability. We developed a virtual reality (VR) based test and investigated whether either test of spatial navigation was reliable.

Objective

To examine test-retest reliability of the real-world and VR triangle completion tests. A secondary objective was to examine the usability of the VR based test.

Materials and methods

Thirty healthy adults aged 18–45 years were recruited to this block randomized study. Participants completed two sessions of triangle completion tests in the real-world and VR on the same day with a break between sessions.

Results

In both test versions distance from the endpoint and angle of deviation showed poor test-retest reliability (r < 0.5). Distance traveled had moderate reliability in both the real-world and VR tests (r = 0.55 95% CI [0.23, 0.76]; r = 0.66 95% CI [0.4, 0.83, respectively]). The VR triangle test showed poor correlation with the real-world test.

Conclusion

The triangle completion test has poor test-retest reliability and demonstrates poor concurrent validity between the real-world and VR. Nevertheless, it was feasible to translate a real-world test of spatial navigation into VR. VR provides opportunities for development of clinically relevant spatial navigation tests in the future.

Changes in audio-spatial working memory abilities during childhood: The role of spatial and phonological development

Working memory is a cognitive system devoted to storage and retrieval processing of information. Numerous studies on the development of working memory have investigated the processing of visuo-spatial and verbal non-spatialized information; however, little is known regarding the refinement of acoustic spatial and memory abilities across development. Here, we hypothesize that audio-spatial memory skills improve over development, due to strengthening spatial and cognitive skills such as semantic elaboration. We asked children aged 6 to 11 years old (n = 55) to pair spatialized animal calls with the corresponding animal spoken name. Spatialized sounds were emitted from an audio-haptic device, haptically explored by children with the dominant hand's index finger. Children younger than 8 anchored their exploration strategy on previously discovered sounds instead of holding this information in working memory and performed worse than older peers when asked to pair the spoken word with the corresponding animal call. In line with our hypothesis, these findings demonstrate that age-related improvements in spatial exploration and verbal coding memorization strategies affect how children learn and memorize items belonging to a complex acoustic spatial layout. Similar to vision, audio-spatial memory abilities strongly depend on cognitive development in early years of life.