The role of perspective in locating position in a real‐world,unfamiliar environment

This paper reports an exploration of how perspective information contributes to localizing and orienting oneself in a real‐world, unfamiliar environment. Participants were asked to recognize their positions on a three‐dimensional map by observing real buildings from different perspectives set at viewpoints between 0° and 180° from a starting position. Results showed that participants were able to use remembered perspective information to locate their subsequent, different position in the correct area of space. They also showed a linear increase in rotation times as the angular distance increased between initially perceived perspective and test position. This finding suggests that the representation of the spatial information acquired from a real world large‐scale environment is orientation dependent. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.