Viewpoint alignment and response conflict during spatial judgment

Spatial judgment (e.g., identifying the relative location, such as left or right, of a target) from a reference point becomes more difficult with increasing disparity between the relevant allocentric viewpoint and the observer-centered viewpoint. The viewpoint alignment hypothesis suggests that this misalignment effect is due to a realignment process that reconciles two viewpoints, implying that providing an advance cue for a viewpoint should facilitate the subsequent judgment. We examined whether advance viewpoint information can reduce the misalignment effect and whether the misalignment effect reflects response conflict, as well as realignment of viewpoints. In Experiment 1, the misalignment effect decreased with advance viewpoint information, suggesting that the misalignment effect indeed reflects viewpoint realignment. In Experiment 2, the misalignment effect was greater with spatial response codes that might conflict with the spatially arranged response keys than with arbitrary responses with no such conflict. These results suggest that the misalignment effect may arise from both viewpoint realignment and response conflicts.