Do environmental characteristics predict spatial memory about unfamiliar environments?

Pagkratidou, Marianna; Galati, Alexia; Avraamides, Marios N.

doi:10.1080/13875868.2019.1676248

Cited by 12 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…The above partly comply with the finding of Pagkratidou et al (2020), where participants pointed more accurately to locations of higher axial integration and connectivity (node D directly connected to, and thus easily accessible from C), but pointed less accurately from those locations (from D to A). Visual connectivity seems also to play an important role as shown by the correctness of estimations regarding direction AE.…”

Section: =1supporting

confidence: 86%

Investigating drivers’ geospatial abilities in unfamiliar environments

Karkasina

Kokla

Tomai

2021

AGILE GIScience Ser.

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Abstract. The prominence of landmarks in aiding pedestrian navigation has been highlighted in various studies; people rely strongly on visual landmarks, especially when navigating in unfamiliar environments. The paper describes the design and implementation of a study for assessing drivers’ spatial abilities, when navigating in an unfamiliar environment. Two types of route directions based on references to either landmarks or street names were given to two groups of participants. Three geospatial learning tasks are used to evaluate these abilities: map sketching, distance, and direction estimation. The findings showed that landmark-based route instructions help drivers develop a better cognitive map of the route. On the other hand, instructions either based on landmarks or on street information do not have an effect on distance or direction estimates. Nonetheless, qualitative analysis of directions and distances estimations gave interesting results. Findings associated with self-assessment of environmental spatial abilities using the Santa Barbara Sense of Direction Scale (SBSOD) seem to support prediction of at least one of the drivers’ abilities among those assessed in this study.

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Section: =1supporting

confidence: 86%

Investigating drivers’ geospatial abilities in unfamiliar environments

Karkasina

Kokla

Tomai

2021

AGILE GIScience Ser.

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“…The two main tasks are a pointing task and a map building task. Virtual Silcton has been widely used by our group (Weisberg, Schinazi, Newcombe) and others (Blacker et al, 2017;Galati et al, 2017;Nazareth et al, 2018;Pagkratidou et al, 2020;Ruginski et al, 2019;Sutton et al, 2014;Weisberg & Newcombe, 2016;Weisberg et al, 2019;Weisberg et al, 2014;Youngson et al, 2019;Zhao et al, 2020).…”

Section: Virtual Silctonmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluating the effects of a programming error on a virtual environment measure of spatial navigation behavior.

Weisberg¹,

Schinazi²,

Ferrario³

et al. 2023

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

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Relying on shared tasks and stimuli to conduct research can enhance the replicability of findings and allow a community of researchers to collect large data sets across multiple experiments. This approach is particularly relevant for experiments in spatial navigation, which often require the development of unfamiliar large-scale virtual environments to test participants. One challenge with shared platforms is that undetected technical errors, rather than being restricted to individual studies, become pervasive across many studies. Here, we discuss the discovery of a software bug in a virtual environment platform used to investigate individual differences in spatial navigation: Virtual Silcton. The bug, which was difficult to detect for several reasons, resulted in storing the absolute value of a direction in a pointing task rather than the signed direction and rendered the original sign of the direction unrecoverable. To assess the impact of the bug on published findings, we collected a new data set for comparison. Results revealed that although the bug caused suppression in pointing errors and had different effects across people (less accurate navigators had more suppression), the effect of the bug on published data is small, partially explaining the difficulty in detecting the bug. We also used the new data set to develop a tool that allows researchers who have previously used Virtual Silcton to evaluate the impact of the bug on their findings. We summarize the ways that shared open materials, shared data, and collaboration can pave the way for better science to prevent errors in the future.

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“…For instance, there is some indication that the male advantage in virtual environments might be accounted for in part by gaming and computer experience (Richardson et al, 2011;Nowak et al, 2015) or spatial perspective-taking skills (Youngson et al, 2019, Experiment 1). Conversely, some studies using the Silcton virtual environment show no sex differences (Weisberg et al, 2014;Nazareth et al, 2018;Youngson et al, 2019, Experiment 2;Pagkratidou et al, 2020). Overall, sex differences in cognitive map accuracy indicating women form less accurate cognitive maps than men seem to be fleeting yet are undeniably present in some studies.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 92%

Sex Differences and Cognitive Maps: Studies in the Lab don’t Always Reflect Cognitive Map Accuracy in Everyday Life

Cocquyt¹,

Youngson

Sutton

2022

Front. Virtual Real.

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The ability to create an accurate mental survey representation, or cognitive map, when moving through an environment varies widely across individuals, and we are still trying to understand the origins of these individual differences. Non-immersive virtual environments used to test for cognitive map accuracy in the laboratory have shown sex differences with a performance advantage for men in some studies but not others. When sex differences are demonstrated, it is unclear whether women’s performance generalizes to familiar and unfamiliar real-world environments. In Experiment 1, 98 participants explored the virtual environment Silcton and afterwards estimated directions between the landmarks in Silcton and arranged landmarks found in Silcton on a map. In addition, they reported frequently visited real-world locations and then estimated directions between them and drew a map of the locations. Men were more accurate on tests of Silcton than women were, although there was no difference between sexes for accuracy with real-world locations. Within sexes, women were more accurate with the real-world locations than Silcton, while men showed the opposite pattern. In Experiment 2, 21 women were tested with Silcton and their familiar real-world locations as in Experiment 1 but were also walked through an unfamiliar real-world area on campus and completed direction estimation and map drawing tests for the new environment. Overall, women were more accurate with the two real-world environments than Silcton, with some evidence that accuracy with the new real-world environment was more accurate than the familiar real-world locations. Overall, women’s ability to create a cognitive map of a virtual environment in the laboratory does not seem to be indicative of their ability to do the same in the real world, and care should be taken when generalizing lab results with virtual environments.

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Do environmental characteristics predict spatial memory about unfamiliar environments?

Cited by 12 publications

References 51 publications

Investigating drivers’ geospatial abilities in unfamiliar environments

Investigating drivers’ geospatial abilities in unfamiliar environments

Evaluating the effects of a programming error on a virtual environment measure of spatial navigation behavior.

Sex Differences and Cognitive Maps: Studies in the Lab don’t Always Reflect Cognitive Map Accuracy in Everyday Life

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