Environmental influences on spatial memory: A study with Space Syntax

In this study we employed Space Syntax techniques to investigate the relation between environmental properties and spatial memory resulting from navigation of an unfamiliar environment. Participants first navigated two main routes in a virtual environment, memorizing the names and locations of buildings in them, and then carried out from memory a pointing task and a model-building task. In the pointing task, participants pointed more accurately to locations of high than low connectivity and integration. However, they pointed less accurately from locations of higher than lower connectivity and integration. This finding can be contextualized by broader memory phenomena (namely, the fan effect), whereby the ease of retrieval of a piece of information depends on its connections with other information. Additionally, both memory tasks here provide evidence that participants maintained the two routes they experienced as distinct representations. Together, our findings suggest that space syntax metrics, such as the connectivity and integration of locations, along with other environmental properties we explore (e.g., whether locations are experienced along the same route or not, and whether locations are intervisible) account well for the way spatial information is stored in and retrieved from memory.