Use of Geometric Properties of Landmark Arrays for Reorientation Relative to Remote Cities and Local Objects Weimin Mou, Jean-François Nankoo, Ruojing Zhou, and Marcia L. Spetch University of Alberta Five experiments investigated how human adults use landmark arrays in the immediate environment to reorient relative to the local environment and relative to remote cities. Participants learned targets’ directions with the presence of a proximal 4 poles forming a rectangular shape and an array of more distal poles forming a rectangular shape. Then participants were disoriented and pointed to targets with the presence of the proximal poles or the distal poles. Participants’ orientation was estimated by the mean of their pointing error across targets. The targets could be 7 objects in the immediate local environment in which the poles were located or 7 cities around Edmonton (Alberta, Canada) where the experiments occurred. The directions of the 7 cities could be learned from reading a map first and then from pointing to the cities when the poles were presented. The directions of the 7 cities could also be learned from viewing labels of cities moving back and forth in the specific direction in the immediate local environment in which the poles were located. The shape of the array of the distal poles varied in salience by changing the number of poles on each edge of the rectangle (2 vs. 34). The results showed that participants regained their orientation relative to local objects using the distal poles with 2 poles on each edge; participants could not reorient relative to cities using the distal pole array with 2 poles on each edge but could reorient relative to cities using the distal pole array with 34 poles on each edge. These results indicate that use of cues in reorientation depends not only on the cue salience but also on which environment people need to reorient to. Keywords: navigation, reorientation, landmark array, geometry cue, spatial memory In everyday life, people need to reorient themselves in the environment after they temporarily lose interaction with the envi- ronment, such as when waking from a nap, or after they change environments, such as when exiting from a subway station. Reori- entation can be relative to the immediate local environment or to broader environments that are beyond the immediate one. Reori- entation relative to the immediate environment enables people to locate goals (objects) in the immediate environment (e.g., locate the bathroom in a house), whereas reorientation relative to the broader environments enables people to know their headings rel- ative to the important landmarks that are beyond the immediate environment (e.g., home, destination city). Although reorientation to the immediate local environment may be necessary for reorien- tation to the broader environment, reorientation to the immediate local environment does not sufficiently lead to reorientation to broader environment. For example, suppose you are visiting a city for the first time. After you stay in your hotel room for a couple of hours, you should be able to locate objects in your room using the rich visual cues in the room. You, however, probably still do not know your heading relative to broader environments (e.g., the city airport) as the visual information in the room does not readily provide your heading information with respect to broader environ- ments. What cues (e.g., feature vs. geometry shape) people use for reorientation relative to immediate local environment have been extensively investigated. However, there is no study investigating what cues people use for reorientation relative to remote environ- ments and contrasting reorientation to remote and local environ- ments. The current study addressed these issues. Reorientation requires perceptual information, typically visual information, which can provide directional information indepen- dent of the observer’s location and orientation. Mathematically, one single distal landmark (e.g., the sun) can provide a directional cue because its direction is unlikely to change while the observer moves within a relatively small environment (Jeffery, 2007; O’Keefe & Nadel, 1978). A group of identical landmarks in the immediate local environment can also specify a unique direction when their configuration cannot be repeated by rotation within 360°. For example, three identical landmarks forming a nonequi- lateral triangle in the immediate environment can specify a unique direction. The boundary (e.g., the walls) of the immediate envi- ronment can also specify a unique direction when the shape of the boundary cannot be repeated by rotation within 360° (Kelly, Mc- Namara, Bodenheimer, Carr, & Rieser, 2008). For example, three walls of a nonequilateral triangle shaped room can specify a unique direction. This article was published Online First November 18, 2013. Weimin Mou, Jean-François Nankoo, Ruojing Zhou, and Marcia L. Spetch, Department of Psychology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Preparation of this article and the research reported in it were supported in part by a grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) to Weimin Mou and by an NSERC grant to Marcia L. Spetch. We are grateful to Eric Legge, Jeffrey Pisklak, Sarah Tan, and Justin Witzke for collecting data. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Weimin Mou, P217 Biological Sciences Building, University of Alberta, Edmon- ton, Alberta, Canada, T6G 2E9. E-mail: wmou@ualberta.ca This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition © 2013 American Psychological Association 2014, Vol. 40, No. 2, 476 – 491 0278-7393/14/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0034976 476