Spatial representations of the viewer's surroundings

Spatial representation surrounding a viewer including outside the visual field is crucial for moving around the three-dimensional world. To obtain such spatial representations, we predict that there is a learning process that integrates visual inputs from different viewpoints covering all the 360 degrees visual angles. We report here the learning effect of the spatial layouts on six displays arranged to surround the viewer, showing shortening of visual search time on surrounding layouts that are repeatedly used (contextual cueing effect). The learning effect is found even in the time to reach the display with the target as well as the time to reach the target within the target display, which indicates that there is an implicit learning effect on spatial configurations of stimulus elements across displays. Since, furthermore, the learning effect is found between layouts and the target presented on displays located even 120 degrees apart, this effect should be based on the representation that covers visual information far outside the visual field.