Navigation and Spatial Cognition

(funded in part by National Science Foundation grant 2217890):

The Navigation Lab studies how people learn, remember, and use spatial information. Human navigation depends on multiple sources of information, including landmarks, boundaries, self-motion cues, maps, prior experience, and memory for routes and locations.

Our research uses behavioral experiments, immersive virtual reality, and computational models to understand how people combine spatial information, make navigation decisions, and update their position while moving through real and virtual environments.

Current work focuses on cue integration, spatial memory, reference frames, prior knowledge, and decision processes in navigation.

Cue integration in navigation

Navigation often requires people to combine multiple sources of spatial information. For example, a person may use landmarks, environmental boundaries, path integration, and remembered goal locations to decide where they are and where to go next.

Our research examines how people combine spatial cues, how they respond when cues conflict, and how prior experience changes the weighting of different sources of information.

• Chen, X., McNamara, T. P., Kelly, J. W., & Wolbers, T. (2017). Cue combination in human spatial navigation. Cognitive Psychology.
• Chen, X., McNamara, T. P., Kelly, J. W., & Wolbers, T. (2018). Optimal combination of environmental cues and path integration during navigation. Memory & Cognition.

Reference frames and spatial memory

Spatial memories can be organized relative to the body, the environment, external landmarks, or the intrinsic structure of a layout. Our work examines how people select and use reference frames when learning and remembering spaces.

This research addresses how spatial memories are acquired, how they change with experience, and how people transfer spatial knowledge across different views, environments, and modalities.

• Kelly, J. W., & McNamara, T. P. (2010). Reference frames during the acquisition and development of spatial memories. Cognition.
• Kelly, J. W., & Avraamides, M. N. (2011). Cross-sensory transfer of reference frames in spatial memory. Cognition.
• Kelly, J. W., Costabile, K. A., & Cherep, L. A. (2018). Social effects on reference frame selection. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review.

Decision processes in human navigation

Navigation can require difficult decisions that involve weighing competing sources of information. For example, the best route between two buildings may depend on distance, weather, familiarity, or whether the route goes indoors or outdoors. People may also encounter conflicts between different sources of spatial information, such as when their sense of direction suggests one turn but a familiar landmark suggests another.

Our current NSF-funded work investigates how people make navigation decisions, resolve cue conflicts, and use navigation aids such as maps. The goal is to understand how spatial knowledge is stored, updated, and used to guide action.

• Chen, X., McNamara, T. P., Chen, Y., Kelly, J. W., Hicks, S., & Serik, Y. (in press). A two-dimensional framework for prior knowledge in goal-directed navigation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.

Navigation in virtual environments

Virtual reality provides precise control over spatial cues, movement, feedback, and environmental structure. The lab uses immersive VR to test theories of spatial cognition and to evaluate how virtual environments shape navigation behavior.

This work connects basic cognitive theory with applied questions about VR training, interface design, usability, and accessibility.

• Kelly, J. W., McNamara, T. P., Bodenheimer, B., Carr, T. H., & Rieser, J. J. (2008). Spatial memories of virtual environments: How egocentric experience, intrinsic structure, and extrinsic structure interact. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review.
• Kelly, J. W., Cherep, L. A., Brenna Klesel, & Zachary D. Siegel. (2018). Comparison of two methods for improving distance perception in virtual reality. ACM Transactions on Applied Perception.
• Kelly, J. W. (2022). Distance perception in virtual reality: A meta-analysis of the effect of head-mounted display characteristics. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics.

Current directions

Current projects examine how prior knowledge affects goal-directed navigation, how people adapt to cue conflicts across experience, and how virtual environments can be used to study navigation in controlled but naturalistic settings.

This work overlaps with our research on VR locomotion interfaces and cybersickness, because how people move through virtual environments affects both spatial learning and user comfort.