Marianne Strickrodt, PhD Student
Hometown: Rockstedt, Germany
Affiliation: MPI for Biological Cybernetics, Department for Human Perception, Cognition and Action
What are you working on?
Im interested in
spatial cognition, e.g., when we move to a new city, how do we
build up memory to orient ourselves and navigate through this new
surrounding? It helps to use the analogy of a large mental map in
which we record all the places we have visited. However, its much
more complicated than that, as the mental reflection of our
surrounding is distorted, segmented and rather imperfect, but still
prevents us from getting lost (most of the time).
How are you going to find out?
I have participants learn a virtual environment containing multiple
objects, depending on the research question sometimes spread across
multiple corridors, sometimes within a fully visible virtual room.
For this Im using an Oculus Rift in combination with a position
tracking system installed in a huge hall, which allows participants
to physically walk through my virtual space. Subsequently their
memory for object locations is tested with the help of different
tasks, such as pointing to objects from memory or drawing maps of
the environment.
What motivates you?
It both challenges and fascinates me to draw conclusions about
possible underlying mechanisms for memory from the behavior of a
person. The errors people make when pointing to a target or the
time they take to do so can tell us quite a lot about their memory
structure. Furthermore, I think not many professions allow you to
learn new skills and gather new knowledge every day.
Your favourite thing outside of
science?
Since doing research involves many
hours of sitting at a desk staring at your computer I enjoy working
with my horse in my free time. There I truly unwind while being in
nature, focusing on myself and my horse.