An implicit spatial memory alignment effect

The memory alignment effect is the advantage of reasoning from a perspective which is aligned with the frame of reference used to encode an environment in memory. It usually occurs when participants have to consciously take a perspective to perform a spatial memory task. The present experiment assesses whether the memory alignment effect can occur without requiring to consciously take a given perspective, when the misaligned perspective is only perceptively provided. In others words, does the memory alignment effect still arise when it is only implicitly prompted? Thirty participants learned a sequence of four objects’ positions in a room from a north-as-up survey perspective. During the testing phase, they had to point to the direction of a target object from another object (‘the reference’) with a fixed north-up orientation. The background behind the reference object displayed either a uniform color (control condition) or a misaligned ground-level perspective. The latter displayed a reference object’s position information which was either congruent with the studied environment (congruent misaligned condition) or incongruent (incongruent misaligned condition). Mean pointing errors were higher in the congruent misaligned condition than in the control condition, whereas the incongruent misaligned condition did not differ from the control one. The present study shows that the memory alignment effect can arise without requiring a conscious misaligned perspective taking. Moreover, the perceived misaligned perspective must share the same spatial content as the memorized spatial representation in order to induce an alignment effect.