Spatial Knowledge Acquired Through Navigation in a Large-Scale Virtual Environment

Abstract

The effects of changes in elevation, route distance, route complexity, and non-spatial information on memory for a virtual environment were investigated. Thirty college students learned the layout of a two-story virtual environment through a series of navigation tasks. Participants were required to learn the route from a starting point to each of 14 rooms in the environment. After completing six blocks of learning trials, the participants estimated route distances and directions, completed a priming task in which they identified the floor that each room was on, and navigated novel routes that were not traversed in the learning trials. The results indicated that the elevation, route distance, and route complexity, affected both learning and memory for the environment. In contrast, non-spatial information had no effect on memory for room location or the layout of the virtual environment.