Spatial Memory in Intellectual Disability: Explanation with the Parallel Map Theory

The parallel map theory explains that the hippocampus encodes space with two mapping systems: The bearing map created from ―directional cues and stimulus gradients‖; The sketch map constructed from ―positional cues‖. The integrated map combines the two mapping systems. Such parallel functioning may explain paradoxes of spatial learning in intellectual disabilities. This people may be able to memorize their surroundings in a highly detailed way, thus ordering their sensory perceptions into a representation that includes the precise localization of static objects, they are not able to ―map‖ their own spatial relationship to those objects. The detection of moving objects by these same subjects contributes to a primary bearing map. The primary map is thus generated by relying on this kind of static map, but also by detecting moving objects. This process can be described as a spatial mode of processing separate objects within the structure of an absolute reference system