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Remembered but Absent Landmarks Enhance Path Integration

Poster Session A - Saturday, March 7, 2026, 3:00 – 5:00 pm PST, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballrooms

Yue Chen¹ (chen27@ualberta.ca), Weimin Mou¹; ¹University of Alberta

Three hypotheses were evaluated to determine whether path integration, updating one’s position using self-motion cues, can be facilitated by remembered but currently absent landmarks. The dominant account, exogenous resetting, assumes that familiar landmarks reduce accumulated path integration error only when they are directly perceived. In contrast, two endogenous mechanisms predict facilitation from remembered landmarks: on-path resetting, which proposes that stepping onto a remembered landmark’s location yields maximal benefit, and a coupling-scaffold mechanism, in which path integration and spatial memory remain continuously coupled so that remembered environmental structure scaffolds ongoing updating. Across three immersive virtual environment experiments, participants walked a four-leg outbound path and then pointed to its origin. In Experiment 1, half of the participants previewed landmarks before each path whereas the other half never saw landmarks. In Experiment 2, participants learned landmark locations between two blocks of homing trials conducted without landmarks. In Experiment 3, participants pointed to visible landmarks between the homing blocks, eliminating the need to remember their locations. Previewing landmarks reliably enhanced homing accuracy, but walking over or near remembered landmark locations produced no additional benefit, and merely pointing to visible landmarks did not improve performance. These findings indicate that remembered landmarks facilitate path integration through ongoing memory-action coupling, supporting a more integrated framework of cue interaction during navigation.

Topic Area: LONG-TERM MEMORY: Other