Egocentric Versus Allocentric: Finding a Superior Learning Strategy in Novel Small-Scale Spatical Learning

Navigational learning strategies have been identified as key skills required to effectively and accurately comprehend novel spaces. Specifically we looked at whether egocentric or allocentic learning strategies would be more effective for a young adult population with simulated field-of-view (FOV) loss. Participants explored a novel, small-scale lab space while learning the location of five bean bags. This exploration period was completed three times, first in a free exploration condition, with no strategy constraints, followed by both strategy conditions (egocentric and allocentric). Each exploration period was followed by recall tasks which tested the participant's ability to accurately remember the location of the bean bags. Since our FOV loss was meant to simulate late-in-life peripheral vision loss, we hypothesized that an allocentric learning strategy would be the most effective and most natural due to the undergraduates' ability to understand relationships between objects in their environment from access to vision early in their life. With our sample of 26 participants (16 female and 10 male), results show no overall differences between conditions but rather a wide variety of individual differences. Particularly we found a relationship between sense of direction and performance on recall tasks. This research adds a unique contribution to literature on low vision navigation and spatial memory. Research has yet to directly examine how using navigational strategies affects the speed and accuracy of learning a new environment.