Heather Burte

spatial@ucsb Research Associate, 2010–2015

Heather Burte received her B.A. in Psychology from the University of Alberta, where she wrote an Honor’s thesis on the interpersonal aspects of spatial navigation, such as how individuals plan and navigate in dyads or as individuals. She worked in industry for four years honing her survey research and project management skills, after which, she started her Master’s degree in the Department of Geography at UCSB, working with Dan Montello. Burte’s M.A. thesis focused on spatial knowledge acquisition in large-scale environments, and the interaction between attention to spatial features and individual differences. Continuing her research on individual differences in spatial cognition, Burte started her Ph.D. in the Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences at UCSB, working with Mary Hegarty. Her dissertation focused on the individual and strategy differences found within the allocentric-heading recall task, which is a task developed to demonstrate the functioning of the human head-direction system. She is currently an Assistant Professor at in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Texas A&M.