Spatial cognitive implications of user interfaces in virtual reality and route guidance

The relationship between spatial learning and technology is becoming more intimately intertwined. This dissertation explores that relationship with multiple technologies and multiple types of spatial knowledge. With virtual reality, teleporting is commonly used to explore large-scale virtual environments when users are limited by the tracked physical space. Past work has shown that locomotion interfaces such as teleporting have spatial cognitive costs associated with the lack of accompanying self-motion cues for small-to-medium scale movement in virtual environments, but less is known about whether the spatial cognitive costs extend to learning a large-scale virtual environment. Experiment 1 (Chapter 2) evaluates whether rotational self-motion cues teleporting interfaces impact spatial learning for large-scale virtual environments. using two measures of survey learning (an object-to-object pointing task and map drawing task). Results indicate that access to rotational self-motion cues when teleporting led to more accurate survey representations of large-scale virtual environments. Therefore, virtual reality developers should strongly consider the benefits of rotational self-motion cues when creating locomotion interfaces. For Experiments 2 and 3 (Chapter 3), previous work has demonstrated that repeatedly using GPS route guidance reliably diminishes route learning. Memory research has shown that recalling information (i.e., testing) significantly improves retention of that information when compared to restudying the same information. Similarly, memory retrieval of routes during learning may be advantageous for long-term retention compared to following route guidance using a GPS. However, whether such a benefit would occur for route learning is not clear because the benefits of testing have primarily been explored with verbal materials. Experiments 2 and 3 explore whether retrieving routes from memory during learning enhance route knowledge of a large-scale virtual city using a driving simulator compared to learning a route by repeatedly following GPS route guidance. Results from both experiments demonstrated that there was no difference in performance between testing and repeatedly following route guidance at final test, but further analysis revealed that in the testing condition, a large proportion of errors produced during learning was also repeated at final test. The experiments described here not only expand the current knowledge regarding the intersection of technology and spatial learning, but also underscore the importance of evaluating applications of spatial cognitive theory across a range of applied domains

Human spatial navigation in the digital era: Effects of landmark depiction on mobile maps on navigators’ spatial learning and brain activity during assisted navigation

Navigation was an essential survival skill for our ancestors and is still a fundamental activity in our everyday lives. To stay oriented and assist navigation, our ancestors had a long history of developing and employing physical maps that communicated an enormous amount of spatial and visual information about their surroundings. Today, in the digital era, we are increasingly turning to mobile navigation devices to ease daily navigation tasks, surrendering our spatial and navigational skills to the hand-held device. On the flip side, the conveniences of such devices lead us to pay less attention to our surroundings, make fewer spatial decisions, and remember less about the surroundings we have traversed. As navigational skills and spatial memory are related to adult neurogenesis, healthy aging, education, and survival, scientists and researchers from multidisciplinary fields have made calls to develop a new account of mobile navigation assistance to preserve human navigational abilities and spatial memory. Landmarks have been advocated for special attention in developing cognitively supportive navigation systems, as landmarks are widely accepted as key features to support spatial navigation and spatial learning of an environment. Turn-by-turn direction instructions without reference to surrounding landmarks, such as those provided by most existing navigation systems, can be one of the reasons for navigators’ spatial memory deterioration during assisted navigation. Despite the benefit of landmarks in navigation and spatial learning, long-standing literature on cognitive psychology has pointed out that individuals have only a limited cognitive capacity to process presented information for a task. When the learning items exceed learners’ capacity, the performance may reach a plateau or even drop. This leads to an unexamined yet important research question on how to visualize landmarks on a mobile map to optimize navigators’ cognitive resource exertion and thus optimize their spatial learning. To investigate this question, I leveraged neuropsychological and hypothesis-driven approaches and investigated whether and how different numbers of landmarks depicted on a mobile map affected navigators’ spatial learning, cognitive load, and visuospatial encoding. Specifically, I set out a navigation experiment in three virtual urban environments, in which participants were asked to follow a given route to a specific destination with the aid of a mobile map. Three different numbers of landmarks—3, 5, and 7—along the given route were selected based on cognitive capacity literature and presented to 48 participants during map-assisted navigation. Their brain activity was recorded both during the phase of map consultation and during that of active locomotion. After navigation in each virtual city, their spatial knowledge of the traversed routes was assessed. The statistical results revealed that spatial learning improved when a medium number of landmarks (i.e., five) was depicted on a mobile map compared to the lowest evaluated number (i.e., three) of landmarks, and there was no further improvement when the highest number (i.e., seven) of landmarks were provided on the mobile map. The neural correlates that were interpreted to reflect cognitive load during map consultation increased when participants were processing seven landmarks depicted on a mobile map compared to the other two landmark conditions; by contrast, the neural correlates that indicated visuospatial encoding increased with a higher number of presented landmarks. In line with the cognitive load changes during map consultation, cognitive load during active locomotion also increased when participants were in the seven-landmark condition, compared to the other two landmark conditions. This thesis provides an exemplary paradigm to investigate navigators’ behavior and cognitive processing during map-assisted navigation and to utilize neuropsychological approaches to solve cartographic design problems. The findings contribute to a better understanding of the effects of landmark depiction (3, 5, and 7 landmarks) on navigators’ spatial learning outcomes and their cognitive processing (cognitive load and visuospatial encoding) during map-assisted navigation. Of these insights, I conclude with two main takeaways for audiences including navigation researchers and navigation system designers. First, the thesis suggests a boundary effect of the proposed benefits of landmarks in spatial learning: providing landmarks on maps benefits users’ spatial learning only to a certain extent when the number of landmarks does not increase cognitive load. Medium number (i.e., 5) of landmarks seems to be the best option in the current experiment, as five landmarks facilitate spatial learning without taxing additional cognitive resources. The second takeaway is that the increased cognitive load during map use might also spill over into the locomotion phase through the environment; thus, the locomotion phase in the environment should also be carefully considered while designing a mobile map to support navigation and environmental learning