Graduate Student

Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience

Office: 415 Wilson Hall
Phone: 615-322-4286
Email:

Degrees

I am exploring whether viewer-centered shapshot-like representations of the environment are stored in long-term memory. Results of some recent experiments indicate that they are. A much larger body of literature, however, suggests that long-term spatial memory is comprised of a single abstract representation of inter-object spatial relations. These two types of representations are in no way mutually exclusive and may be necessary to explain the full range of human spatial behaviors. I am currently conducting experiments to distinguish between these two types of representations behaviorally.

McNamara, T. P., Diwadkar, V. A., Blevins, W. A., & Valiquette, C. M. (2006). Representations of apparent rotation. Visual Cognition, 13(3), 273-307.
McNamara, T. P., & Valiquette, C. M. (2002). Remembering where things are. In G. Allen (Ed.), Human spatial memory: Remebering where: Lawrence Erlbaum and Associates.
Mou, W., McNamara, T. P., Valiquette, C. M., & Rump, B. (2004). Allocentric and Egocentric Updating of Spatial Memories. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 30(1), 142-157.
Valiquette, C. M., & McNamara, T. P. (in press). Different mental representations for place recognition and goal localization. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review.
Valiquette, C. M., McNamara, T. P., & Labrecque, J. S. (2006). Biased representations of the spatial structure of navigable environments. Psychological Research, 71(3), 288-297.
Valiquette, C. M., McNamara, T. P., & Smith, K. (2003). Locomotion, incidental learning, and the selection of spatial reference systems. Memory and Cognition, 31(3), 479-489.