Drawing Maps and Remembering Landmarks after Driving in a Virtual Small Town Environment

Abstract

Participants were designated active drivers or passive passengers according to whether or not they had control over the displacements of a virtual vehicle, while taking 5, 10 or 15 tours of a virtual small town environment. When tested later, passive passengers were able to remember more landmarks than the active drivers. However, with successive tours, participants in both groups were able to draw better survey maps of the environment, though this effect was greater in passive passengers. Landmark memory and map drawing ability were positively correlated. The results support models of spatial cognition that emphasise survey representations as the end product of spatial learning in new environments, but also emphasise that the acquisition of landmark information is continuous throughout this process.

Electrocortical Evidence for Long-Term Incidental Spatial Learning Through Modified Navigation Instructions

“…This is supported by previous studies reporting reduced recollection of learned words when attention was divided during encoding by a secondary task [35]. Furthermore, passive passengers were reported A u t h o r M a n u s c r i p t to recall more landmarks compared to active drivers [36]. Another possible cause for improved recognition rates for irrelevant landmarks, especially in the control group, might have been a response bias.…”

Virtual Enactment Effect on Memory in Young and Aged Populations: A Systematic Review

“…Three-dimensional virtual reality seems to stimulate memory due to higher body involvement but also reduced energy consumption [74]; however, Palermo and co-authors [79] found that immersive interaction with a gyroscope, although reported as interesting, could be frustrating and showed a minor degree of engagement compared to classic active interaction with a mouse. Finally, a trial effect emerged confirming the positive effect of repetition on performance (e.g., [59]). Interestingly, exposure times led to better survey representation for passive participants, as noted by Sandamas and Foreman [59].…”

“…Graphic realism when building VEs should take into account the fact that a detailed environment positively affects memory performances [77]. Other elements that neuroscientists in the field of VR and memory should consider are the type of encoding (incidental vs. intentional); although the authors of [62] showed no effect of encoding, in our review intentional encoding leads to better performance across the populations and the type of memory assessed [8,9,43,58,59,67,68,69,70,75,80]. Crucially, only one study [72] compared active VR vs. passive VR vs. real-world navigation, with real-world navigation and active VR leading to better spatial recall, in this order, compared to passive VR.…”

“…Passive navigation in the studies included in the review consisted of a yoked condition or pre-recorded navigations. Navigational decision-making, or free exploration, is another crucial aspect of active navigation and spatial knowledge [84]; however, in 17 experiments [9,59,60,61,62,63,64,65,70,71,72,77,78,79], researchers gave a predetermined route or instructions to follow. Moreover, decision-making is a crucial aspect of the virtual enactment effect when older participants are involved in active navigation [8] due to overload on the frontal lobes and the executive functions capacity on memory encoding [68], which are known to decline with aging [85].…”

“…Reviews, meeting abstracts, notes, case reports, letters to the editor, research protocols, patents, editorials and other editorial materials were also excluded. Five studies [57,58,59,60,61] did not appear during our search but were in line with our inclusion criteria; therefore, they were added to the included studies.…”