Fig. 1.

Virtual reality town used in the experiments. (A) Example screenshots of views participants would have experienced in the task. (B) Overhead schematic views of the environmental layout for Experiments 1 and 2. The starting location (Pizzeria) is marked. Lines with arrows indicate possible paths from the starting point to learned goal locations. In Experiment 2, the environment was identical, but participants only delivered to 9 locations. The laterality of the elongated section was counterbalanced across participants – it was located on the left hand side for half of the participants and on the right hand side for the other half in each experiment. (C) A one-way system of routes was constructed to create pairs of routes with equal PD but different ED, all with equal numbers of turns. In Experiment 1, each goal location was in the middle of each road segment and in Experiment 2, it was at the junction. To reach goals on L-shaped routes in Experiment 1, participants travelled along the main road until they believed they had reached the correct turning point. In Experiment 2, participants were required to make a turn as soon as they reached the elongated section of the environment, therefore controlling for exposure to all locations with matched PD in Experiment 2. (D) Examples of pairs of routes with equal path distance but different Euclidean distance and vice versa.