Point-to-origin experiments in VR revealed novel qualitative errors in visual path integration

Even in state-of-the-art virtual reality (VR) setups, participants often feel lost when navigating through virtual environments. In psychological experiments, such disorientation is often compensated for by extensive training and performance feedback. The current study investigated participants' sense of direction by means of a rapid point-to-origin task without any training or performance feedback. This allowed us to study participants' intuitive spatial orientation processes in VR while minimizing the influence of higher cognitive abilities and compensatory strategies. From an applied perspective, such a paradigm could be employed for evaluating the effectiveness and usability of a given VR setup for enabling natural and unencumbered spatial orientation even for first-time users, which is important for tasks such as architecture walk-throughs, evacuation scenario training, or driving/flight simulators

Influence of Ethnicity, Gender and Answering Mode on a Virtual Point-to-Origin Task

In a virtual point-to-origin task, participants seem to show different response patterns and underlying strategies for orientation, such as ”turner” and ”non-turner” response patterns. Turners respond as if succeeding to update simulated heading changes, and non-turners respond as if failing to update their heading, resulting in left-right hemisphere errors. We present two other response patterns, ”non-movers” and ”spinners”, that also appear to result in failures to update heading. We have three specific goals in mind: (1) extend previous findings of higher turner rates with spatial language response mode using a point-to-origin task instead of a triangle completion task; (2) replicate the gender effect of males more likely responding as turners; (3) examine ethnicity influence. Designed as a classroom study, we presented participants (N = 498) with four passages through a virtual star field. Participants selected the direction pointing to the origin from four multiple-choice items. Response mode was either pictograms or written lan- guage, chosen to compare with similar studies and see if these response modes have an effect on virtual orientation behaviour. Results show a majority of participants (48.35%) classified as non-turners, 32.93% turners, 15.57% as non-movers, and 3.14% as spinners. A multinomial regression model reached 49% classification performance. Written spatial language, compared to pictograms, made turner response patterns more likely; this effect was more pronounced for Chinese participants and among females, but not male Caucasians. Moreover, higher turner numbers for written spatial language extends Avraamides findings of higher turner numbers when participants turned their bodies toward the origin but not when they responded verbally. Using pictorial response mode (i.e., top-down picture of a head) may have increased cognitive load because it could be considered more embodied. It remains to be seen how we can reduce the reference frame conflict that might have caused increased cognitive load. Second, our results are inconsistent with previous research in that males overall did not show more turner behaviour than females. Future research may look at possible underlying factors, such as cultural norms. Third, individualistic cultures (Caucasians) [Greif, 1994] lean towards turner response patterns, whereas collectivist cultures lean towards non-turner response patterns

Brain Dynamics of Spatial Reference Frame Proclivity in Active Navigation.

Recent research into navigation strategy of different spatial reference frames (self-centered egocentric reference frame and environment-centered allocentric reference frame) has revealed that the parietal cortex plays an important role in processing allocentric information to provide a translation function between egocentric and allocentric spatial reference frames. However, most studies merely focused on a passive experimental environment, which is not truly representative of our daily spatial learning/navigation tasks. This study investigated the factor associated with brain dynamics that causes people to switch their preferred spatial strategy in both active and passive navigations to bridge the gap. Virtual reality (VR) technique and Omni treadmill are applied to realize actively walking for active navigation, and for passive navigation, participants were sitting while conducting the same task. Electroencephalography (EEG) signals were recorded to monitor spectral perturbations on transitions between egocentric and allocentric frames during a path integration task. Forty-one right-handed male participants from authors' university participated this study. Our brain dynamics results showed navigation involved areas including the parietal cortex with modulation in the alpha band, the occipital cortex with beta and low gamma band perturbations, and the frontal cortex with theta perturbation. Differences were found between two different turning-angle paths in the alpha band in parietal cluster event-related spectral perturbations (ERSPs). In small turning-angle paths, allocentric participants showed stronger alpha desynchronization than egocentric participants; in large turning-angle paths, participants for two reference frames had a smaller difference in the alpha frequency band. Behavior results of homing errors also corresponded to brain dynamic results, indicating that a larger angle path caused the allocentric to have a higher tendency to become egocentric navigators in the active navigation environment

Orientation and metacognition in virtual space

Cognitive scientists increasingly use virtual reality scenarios to address spatial perception, orientation, and navigation. If based on desktops rather than mobile immersive environments, this involves a discrepancy between the physically experienced static position and the visually perceived dynamic scene, leading to cognitive challenges that users of virtual worlds may or may not be aware of. The frequently reported loss of orientation and worse performance in point-to-origin tasks relate to the difficulty of establishing a consistent reference system on an allocentric or egocentric basis. We address the verbalisability of spatial concepts relevant in this regard, along with the conscious strategies reported by participants. Behavioural and verbal data were collected using a perceptually sparse virtual tunnel scenario that has frequently been used to differentiate between humans' preferred reference systems. Surprisingly, the linguistic data we collected relate to reference system verbalisations known from the earlier literature only to a limited extent, but instead reveal complex cognitive mechanisms and strategies. Orientation in desktop VR appears to pose considerable challenges, which participants react to by conceptualising the task in individual ways that do not systematically relate to the generic concepts of egocentric and allocentric reference frames

An Initial Exploration of a Multi-Sensory Design Space: Tactile Support for Walking in Immersive Virtual Environments

Multi-sensory feedback can potentially improve user experience and performance in virtual environments. As it is complicated to study the effect of multi-sensory feedback as a single factor, we created a design space with these diverse cues, categorizing them into an appropriate granularity based on their origin and use cases. To examine the effects of tactile cues during non-fatiguing walking in immersive virtual environments, we selected certain tactile cues from the design space, movement wind, directional wind and footstep vibration, and another cue, footstep sounds, and investigated their influence and interaction with each other in more detail. We developed a virtual reality system with non-fatiguing walking interaction and low-latency, multi-sensory feedback, and then used it to conduct two successive experiments measuring user experience and performance through a triangle-completion task. We noticed some effects due to the addition of footstep vibration on task performance, and saw significant improvement due to the added tactile cues in reported user experience

Metrics for Evaluating Surgical Microscope Usage During Myringotomy

Abstract Although teaching and learning surgical microscope manoeuvring is a fundamental step in middle ear surgical training, currently there is no objective method to teach or assess this skill. This thesis presents an experimental study designed to implement and test sets of metrics capable of numerically evaluating microscope manoeuvrability and qualitatively assessing surgical expertise of a subject during a middle ear surgery called myringotomy. The experiment involved performing a myringotomy on a fixed cadaveric ear. As participants, experienced ear-nose-throat (ENT) surgeons and ENT surgical residents were invited. While performing the procedure, their microscope manoeuvring motions were captured as translational and angular coordinates using an optical tracker. These data were analyzed in terms of motion path length, velocity, acceleration, jitter, manoeuvring volume, smoothness, rotation and time. Participants’ hand motion, body posture and microscopic view were also video recorded to qualitatively assess their surgical expertise. Several metrics were statistically identified as discriminatory. These metrics will be incorporated into a myringotomy surgical simulator to train ENT residents