Shelton, A. L., & McNamara, T. P. (1997). Multiple views of spatial memory. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 4, 102-106.




Recent evidence indicates that memory representations for large spaces are viewpoint dependent when observers are restricted to a single view. The purpose of the present study was to determine whether two views of a space would provide a single viewpoint-independent representation or two viewpoint-dependent representations. Participants learned the locations of objects in a room from two viewpoints, and then made judgments of relative direction from imagined headings either aligned or misaligned with the studied views. The results indicated that mental representations of room sized spaces were viewpoint-dependent, and that two views of a spatial layout produced two viewpoint-dependent representations in memory. Imagined headings aligned with the study views were more accessible than novel headings, and the difficulty of retrieving a novel heading was a linear function of the angular distance to the nearest study view.