Idiothetic literally means "self-proposition" (greek derivation), and is used in navigation models (e.g., of a rat in a maze) as in the phrase "idiothetic cues" to indicate that path-integration was used to determine the present location instead of allothetic, or external, cues (e.g., visual or tactile). The term idiothetic is also used in psychology and is compared with ipsative and contrasted to nomothetic.

See also navigation research, neuroscience.