You (Lily) Cheng’s paper titled “(Don’t) Look Where You Are Going: Evidence for a Travel Direction Signal in Humans That Is Independent of Head Direction” was recently published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General! Here, she challenges the common assumption that these two factors are redundant, arguing that they provide different spatial information. The study uses a novel motion adaptation paradigm from visual neuroscience, designed to isolate the effect of travel direction from head direction. The results show high-level aftereffects of perceived travel direction, suggesting that travel direction is a crucial component of human navigation. Interestingly, the study found a higher frequency of reporting perceived travel toward the adapted direction, an aftereffect that contradicts low-level motion aftereffects. This effect persisted even after controlling for potential response biases and approaching effects, and it increased with the duration of adaptation. These findings provide the first evidence of how a pure travel direction signal might be represented in humans, independently of head direction!
Cheng, Y., Ling, S., Stern, C.E., Huang, A. & Chrastil, E.R. (2024). (Don’t) look where you are going: Evidence for a travel direction signal in humans that is independent of head direction. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 153(4), 1038-1052.
Cheng, Y., Ling, S., Stern, C.E., Huang, A. & Chrastil, E.R.(2024)
