Navigation Training in Virtual Environments

Virtual environments (VE) promise important opportunities as future interfaces to computational systems, especially where such technology can take advantage of strong human visuospatial capabilities. Although such synthetic environments often project homeomorphic physical representations of real-world layouts, it is not known how individuals develop representational models to match these environments. To evaluate this process, this experiment examined participant's accuracy in reproducing triadic representations of objects, having learned them previously under 1 of 3 different conditions. The layout consisted of 9 common objects arranged on a flat plane. These objects could be viewed in a free VE, a static VE, or from the static view of a map. The first condition allowed active exploration of the environment while the latter two conditions allowed the participant only a passive opportunity to observe from a single viewpoint. Viewing conditions were a between-subject variable with seven participants random...