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Abstract

This study examined orientation specificity in human long-term memory for environmental spaces. Thirty-eight participants learned an immersive virtual e nvironment by walking in one direction. The environment cons isted of seven corridors within which target objects were located. In the testing phase, participants were teleported to different locations in the environment and were asked to identify their location and heading and then to point towards previously learned targets. As predicted by view-dependent theo ries, participants pointed more accurately when oriented in the direction in which they originally learned each corridor; even when visibility was limited to one meter. When th e whole corridor was visible, participants also self-localised better when oriented in the learned orientation. No support was found for a global reference direction underlying the memory of the whole layout or for an exclusive orientation-indepe ndent memory. We propose a ?network of reference frames? theory to integrate elements of the different theoretical positions.