Speed and accuracy of reorientation from a bird's eye view: Does the type of spatial information matter?

This set of studies examines accuracy and reaction times of human adults in a reorientation task when the spatial information available is manipulated. All experiments used within subjects designs in which participants saw figures containing different types of useful spatial information (Experiment 1: a landmark, a geometric cue, a landmark and a geometric cue, and no useful cue) or pairs of different cues (Experiment 2a: two landmarks, two geometric cues, and a landmark and a geometric cue together; Experiment 2b: two configurations of two landmarks, two geometric cues, and a landmark and a geometric cue together) on a computer screen and were asked to find a location on a rotated version of the figure following a short delay. In Experiment 1, participants were less accurate in the landmark condition and the conditions that included geometric elements were faster. In Experiments 2a and 2b, the conditions that included geometry were faster than the landmark only condition that had no geometry. The results are discussed in terms of theoretical accounts of the processing of featural and geometric sources of information.