Comparable human spatial memory distortions in physical, desktop virtual and immersive virtual environments

Abstract

Boundaries define regions of space and are integral to episodic memories. The impact of boundaries on spatial memory and neural representations of space has been extensively studied in freely-moving rodents. But less is known in humans and many prior studies have employed desktop virtual reality (VR) which lacks the body-based self-motion cues of the physical world, diminishing the potentially strong input from path integration to spatial memory. We replicated a desktop-VR study testing the impact of boundaries on spatial memory (Hartley et al., 2004) in a physical room (2.4m x 2.4m, 2m tall) by having participants (N = 27) learn the location of a circular stool and then after a short delay replace it where they thought they had found it. During the delay, the wall boundaries were either expanded or contracted. We compared performance to groups of participants undergoing the same procedure in a laser-scanned replica in both desktop VR (N = 44) and freely-walking head mounted display (HMD) VR (N = 39) environments. Performance was measured as goodness of fit between the spatial distributions of group responses and seven modelled distributions that prioritised different metrics based on boundary geometry or walking paths to estimate the stool location. The best fitting model was a weighted linear combination of all the geometric spatial models, but an individual model derived from place cell firing in Hartley et al. 2004 also fit well. High levels of disorientation in all three environments prevented detailed analysis on the contribution of path integration. We found identical model fits across the three environments, though desktop VR and HMD-VR appeared more consistent in spatial distributions of group responses than the physical environment and displayed known variations in virtual depth perception. Thus, while human spatial representation appears differentially influenced by environmental boundaries, the influence is similar across virtual and physical environments. Despite differences in body-based cue availability, desktop and HMD-VR allow a good and interchangeable approximation for examining human spatial memory in small-scale physical environments.

Architectural experience: clarifying its central components and their relation to core affect with a set of first-person-view videos

“…Nonetheless, the resulting set of 63 videos will provide a reliable resource for future empirical studies of architectural experience, confirmed by the aforementioned results replicating findings previously attributed to still images (Coburn et al, 2020). As argued in section 1, emotion is central to the study of architectural experience (Mallgrave, 2013;Zisch, Gage and Spiers, 2014), so it was particularly important that the videos in the dataset resulted in consistently positive or negative valence ratings across participants.…”

“…Future work could address this by creating bespoke videos and possibly through the use of 360 degree film footage with sound presented via immersive virtual reality (VR) (Mazumder, Spiers & Ellard, 2020). Another approach would be to use laser-scanning of environments for porting in VR and then manipulating the architecture in the models (Zisch et al, 2022).…”

“…There is wide variation in navigation ability which impacts people's ability to make sense of a space and navigate (e.g. Weisberg & Newcombe, 2018;Coutrot et al, 2022;Spiers et al, 2021;Hegarty et al, 2022;Ishikawa, 2022), and their use of cues when learning environments (Ishikawa & Nakamura, 2012). We explored whether self-assessed navigational ability influences responses to architectural environments.…”

“…Additionally, though calculating NSQ scores and excluding architectural experts gave us some proxy for individual difference, there are many more facets that could be considered, as individual differences can explain navigational performance and spatial processing (e.g. Coutrot et al, 2022;Spiers et al, 2021;Zanchi et al, 2022). It would be beneficial to conduct more research including participants with different personality types and traits to get a more nuanced understanding of experiences, given that individual differences in personality are known to impact affective responses in general (Winter & Kuiper, 1997).…”

“…Here, we introduce this dataset and examine the nature of architectural experience. Encompassed within this are aesthetic valuation, affective response and spatial mapping -on entering a space we take in visual information; evaluate its characteristics, beauty and how it makes us feel; but we must also comprehend the space to fulfil the functional goal of moving through it (Zisch, Gage, Spiers, 2014;Gregorians & Spiers, in press). Whilst aesthetic and affective experience are often considered in tandem, spatial cognition tends to be considered quite separately.…”