Maayan Merhav, Dafna Fisher-Gewirtzman
These findings suggest that architectural design fundamentally shapes the persistence of spatial memory by influencing the mechanisms engaged during learning and retrieval, offering a blueprint for environments that maximize long-term retention.
BACKGROUND: Spatial memories undergo systems consolidation, typically transforming from flexible, hippocampal-dependent representations of spatial relations, to rigid, extra-hippocampal route representations. This study investigated whether environmental design influences this consolidation process to enhance long-term wayfinding.
METHODS: We compared navigational performance in a virtual shopping centre featuring either a "Grid" configuration, which promotes flexible navigational representations, or a "Star" configuration, which encourages route-based sequence learning. In Experiment 1 (N = 66), participants were tested at 2 h and 2 weeks post-learning to assess repetition effects, while in Experiment 2 (N = 62), participants were tested only after 2 weeks to isolate time-dependent decay.
RESULTS: Results demonstrated that the Star design supported superior retention after the two-week delay compared to the Grid design, and that repeated retrieval selectively enhanced performance in the Star design.
CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that architectural design fundamentally shapes the persistence of spatial memory by influencing the mechanisms engaged during learning and retrieval, offering a blueprint for environments that maximize long-term retention.