Allocentric vs. Egocentric Spatial Processing

Our research on allocentric-egocentric spatial processing includes three main directions:

• Development of allocentric and egocentric spatial assessments
• Spatial Navigation and Individual Differences in Environmental Representations
• Spatial Updating

This line of research focuses on examining the dissociation between the two types of spatial imagery transformations: allocentric spatial transformations, which involve an object-to-object representational system and encode information about the location of one object or its parts with respect to other objects, versus egocentric perspective transformations that involve a self-to-object representational system.

In our lab, we examine individual differences in egocentric (imagining taking a different perspective in space) and allocentric (mentally manipulating objects from a stationary point of view ) spatial abilities, and develop assessments of these abilities .Our research also seeks to discover the relation of these two types of spatial ability to locomotion and spatial navigation.