Skip to main content

Psychological Sciences

Psychological Sciences
  2. People
  3. Profile

Andrew McAvan

Graduate Student
Research Area: Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience


Human spatial navigation and decision making in non-Euclidean VR spaces.

I am interested in studying how humans navigate and make decisions in non-Euclidean spaces. To achieve this, I develop experiments using the Unity 3D game engine in conjunction with cutting-edge VR technology. I did my undergraduate studies at the University of Arizona, where I worked with multiple labs assessing not only retention rates of children in the Pima County DES system, but also exploring how humans react to stress. Post undergrad I worked at an in-patient rehabilitation facility for individuals with substance abuse and mood disorders, followed by the Human Spatial Cognition Lab at the University of Arizona. In my free time, I enjoy playing games of all kinds (tabletop, video, etc.), exploring nature, and creating things.

Representative Publications

Du, Y. K., McAvan, A. S., Zheng, J., & Ekstrom, A. D. (under revision). Spatial memory distortions for the shapes of walked paths occur in violation of physically experienced geometry. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/yp7rn

McAvan, A. S., Wank, A. A., Rapcsak, S. Z., Grilli, M. D., & Ekstrom, A. D. (2022). Largely intact memory for spatial locations during navigation in an individual with dense amnesia. Neuropsychologia, 170:108225. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2022.108225

McAvan, A. S., Du, Y. K., Oyao, A., Doner, S., Grilli, M. D., & Ekstrom, A. D. (2021). Older Adults Show Reduced Spatial Precision but Preserved Strategy-Use During Spatial Navigation Involving Body-Based Cues. Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, 13:640188. Doi: 10.3389/fnagi.2021.640188

Starrett, M. J., McAvan, A. S., Huffman, D. J., Stokes, J. D., Kyle, C. T.,
Smuda, D. N., Kolarik, B. S., Laczko, J., & Ekstrom, A. D. (2021).
Landmarks: A solution for spatial navigation and memory experiments in
virtual reality. Behavior Research Methods, 53(3), 1046-1059.
https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-020-01481-6

Zheng, L., Gao, Z., McAvan, A. S., Isham, E., & Ekstrom, A. D. (2021) Partially overlapping spatial environments trigger reinstatement in hippocampus and schema representations in prefrontal cortex. Nature Communications, 12, 6231. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-26560-w