Where do I go from here?: Contribution of idiothetic and allothetic representations to directional decisions when switching environments

Deciding which way to turn when exiting a building requires one to be oriented with respect to the wider environment. However, it is not clear how different representations facilitate the switch from one environment to another. To examine how navigational experience affects processing of local views of the environment, we considered two representations: (1) idiothetic, which relies on continuous tracking of one's position changes from cues generated by self-motion; and (2) allothetic, where the current position is inferred from external visual cues. Participants completed a walkthrough a 3D rendered city street intermediately entering and exiting an indoor space. We manipulated complexity of the indoor path to induce low or high disorientation, and mirror-reversed the street view upon exiting in half the trials to dissociate between the representations. Upon return to the external environment, participants chose a turn to continue in the tasked direction, and then verified chosen direction after viewing the street's end. Accuracy and response times revealed that self-motion cues often guided initial directional choices, while external visual information became more influential once additional views were available. These effects reflected a flexible, dynamic re-weighting of idiothetic and allothetic information depending on task demands and cue reliability. This dynamic interaction highlights the adaptability of the navigation system in integrating internal and external signals to maintain orientation across changing contexts, offering new insight into how navigational experience supports structured spatial knowledge and scene understanding.