Ecological validity of virtual environments to assess human navigation ability

Route memory is frequently assessed in virtual environments. These environments can be presented in a fully controlled manner and are easy to use. Yet they lack the physical involvement that participants have when navigating real environments. For some aspects of route memory this may result in reduced performance in virtual environments. We assessed route memory performance in four different environments: real, virtual, virtual with directional information (compass), and hybrid. In the hybrid environment, participants walked the route outside on an open field, while all route information (i.e. path, landmarks) was shown simultaneously on a handheld tablet computer. Results indicate that performance in the real life environment was better than in the virtual conditions for tasks relying on survey knowledge, like pointing to start and end point, and map drawing. Performance in the hybrid condition however, hardly differed from real life performance. Performance in the virtual environment did not benefit from directional information. Given these findings, the hybrid condition may offer the best of both worlds: the performance level is comparable to that of real life for route memory, yet it offers full control of visual input during route learning.

keywords: Psychology, Trajectories

Journal Article (peer-reviewed)

Annemarie Faber, Ineke van der Ham, Maarten Löffler, Marc van Kreveld, Mathhijs Venselaar
Ecological validity of virtual environments to assess human navigation ability
Frontiers in Psychology
6, 637, 2015
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00637

Conference Proceedings (peer-reviewed)

Annemarie Faber, Ineke van der Ham, Maarten Löffler, Marc van Kreveld, Mathhijs Venselaar
Route Memory in Real, Virtual, and Hybrid Environments
Abstracts of the Psychonomic Society
67, 2014
http://www.psychonomic.org/Assets/a90b21c9-333a-43f8-83c2-96c001ba1d52/635454216658270000/2014-psychonomic-society-abstract-book-pdf

back to list