Topological structure in human spatial representation revealed through drawing
- 1The Ohio State University
Abstract
Human spatial representations are often assumed to represent Euclidean properties such as length, distance, and angle. Here we test an alternative (but not mutually exclusive) possibility - that spatial memory is structured around topological relations. Across four experiments, adults and children memorized simple letter-like figures and reproduced them by drawing. Drawings showed systematic distortions of metric features, including strong biases of angles toward 90 degrees and compression of line length towards an average value. In contrast, topologically critical features - such as T-junctions and holes - were reliably preserved, even relative to closely matched but topologically irrelevant features like L-junctions. These effects were magnified in a serial reproduction paradigm, in which participants iteratively generated new drawings from previous participant drawings: At the end of each mnemonic chain, figures converged on simplified topological structures as metric detail degraded. Similar patterns were observed in children aged five to eight years. Together, these findings suggest that topological relations may function as primitive building blocks of human spatial representation, with metric detail encoded inconsistently.
Related
- CUBE: Multimodal Representation Learning Reveals Biological Structure Across Histomorphology, Spatial Protein Phenotypes, and Transcriptome-Associated Signals
- Spatial genotypic patterns within monospecific stands of a dominant coral revealed through photogrammetry-guided sampling.
- Time-averaged and Time-varying Structure of the Gastric Network Revealed Through fMRI-Electrogastrogram Synchronization
- XplainTDA: Explaining the topological structure of single-cell multi-omics data through perturbation
- Accounting for spatial structure and surface conditions through in situ soil spectral information: application to soil organic carbon modelling
BibTeX
@misc{kittur2026topological,
title = {{Topological structure in human spatial representation revealed through drawing}},
author = {M. Kittur and A. Zhang and N. Bryce and S. R. Yousif},
howpublished = {bioRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = jun,
doi = {10.64898/2026.06.12.731853},
url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.06.12.731853v2},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Topological structure in human spatial representation revealed through drawing
AU - M. Kittur
AU - A. Zhang
AU - N. Bryce
AU - S. R. Yousif
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/06/12
PB - bioRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.06.12.731853
UR - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.06.12.731853v2
AB - Human spatial representations are often assumed to represent Euclidean properties such as length, distance, and angle. Here we test an alternative (but not mutually exclusive) possibility - that spatial memory is structured around topological relations. Across four experiments, adults and children memorized simple letter-like figures and reproduced them by drawing. Drawings showed systematic distortions of metric features, including strong biases of angles toward 90 degrees and compression of line length towards an average value. In contrast, topologically critical features - such as T-junctions and holes - were reliably preserved, even relative to closely matched but topologically irrelevant features like L-junctions. These effects were magnified in a serial reproduction paradigm, in which participants iteratively generated new drawings from previous participant drawings: At the end of each mnemonic chain, figures converged on simplified topological structures as metric detail degraded. Similar patterns were observed in children aged five to eight years. Together, these findings suggest that topological relations may function as primitive building blocks of human spatial representation, with metric detail encoded inconsistently.
ER -