Spatial Representation
Making sense of space — through spatial formats
The world is filled with spatial information. In any given moment, we have to represent the shape of the environment around us, the size and form of the objects within it, and the locations of those objects relative to each other and to ourselves. All of that information has to get compressed into lower-dimensional forms that we hold in memory and act upon.
Objects in Space
Coordinate System
There are many ways of characterizing the ‘shape’ of space. For instance, you could describe spatial relationships in a very coarse way: “The red rectangle is to the left of the light-blue square.” Or you could describe the location of each object in a very precise way, appealing to the precise coordinates of the objects within some reference format.
A Spatial Format:
In our lab, we’re interested in the various formats of spatial representations — including those that are more coarse and those that are more fine-grained. [Insert a sentence about each of the formats represented below and what they offer our sense of space specifically…]
COORDINATE SYSTEMS. This is a sentence introducing the this concept and here is some more content. Here is a follow up sentence. This is a sentence introducing the this concept and here is some more content. Here is a follow up sentence.
We do not think that any particular way of representing space is the ‘right’ one; instead, we tend to think that people rely on different formats depending on the demands of the current task or the nature of the environment (see Yousif, 2022). Our goal is just to understand, broadly, the primitives that support spatial representation — of places and of objects, at smaller scales and larger scales. By understanding these primitives, we can better understand how our sense of space is constructed through perception and stored/distorted in memory.
From making sense of space to making sense of time…
TOPOLOGY. This is a sentence introducing the this concept and here is some more content. Here is a follow up sentence.
This is a section that is about connecting our understanding of space with our understanding of time. Here is another sentence about that. Here is another sentence about that. Here is another sentence about that. Here is another sentence about that.