THE ACQUISITION OF ROUTE AND SURVEY KNOWLEDGE FROM COMPUTER MODELS

doi:10.1006/jevp.1998.0115

Journal of Environmental Psychology

Volume 19, Issue 2, June 1999, Pages 101-115

https://doi.org/10.1006/jevp.1998.0115 Get rights and content

Abstract

Two experiments were conducted investigating a series of issues concerning the nature of the spatial knowledge obtained from a computer model of a campus environment. The issues investigated were: the relative acquisition of route and survey knowledge, the construction of survey knowledge over repeated exposures, the orientation-specific nature of the cognitive representation, and practical wayfinding abilities. A series of tests were administered to assess the route and survey knowledge of subjects who learned a campus environment from a map, computer model, or direct experience. The results indicated that computer experience leads to the acquisition of some elements of both route and survey knowledge. There was also evidence of orientation specificity and functional wayfinding knowledge.

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Emergency evacuation in metro stations could be highly challenging due to complex underground environments, dynamic hazards and high-density crowds. There are different types of metro passengers, such as first-time visitors and daily commuters, who may possess different levels of prior spatial knowledge about the metro station. While spatial knowledge is known as an influential factor on people's indoor wayfinding behavior, it has largely remained unknown whether and how the level of completeness of prior spatial knowledge would affect people's wayfinding behavior during emergency evacuation in underground environments such as metro stations. Motivated by this gap, this study aimed to examine the effect of completeness of spatial knowledge on the evacuation behavior of passengers in metro stations, as they observed different patterns of crowd flow. An evacuation experiment was conducted in an immersive virtual environment, which was a virtual representation of a real metro station in Beijing. Participants were divided into six groups according to a 3 × 2 between-participants design. Participants could possess none, partial or complete spatial knowledge of the metro station, acquired from a spatial exploration task, prior to evacuation. Meanwhile, they could observe two patterns of crowd flow, modeled by having virtual avatars evacuating from the metro station evenly or unevenly split at every decision point (DP) along the evacuation routes. Five wayfinding performance measures, as well as the emotional responses, sense of direction, wayfinding anxiety, simulator sickness and sense of presence of all participants were collected and analyzed. The results showed that the completeness of spatial knowledge significantly impacted all measures of participants' evacuation performance, and that the pattern of crowd flow significantly impacted participants' evacuation speed, route choice, and directional choices at two DPs. Significant interaction effect between completeness of spatial knowledge and pattern of crowd flow was observed, which negatively impacted participants' evacuation time, distance and speed. The behavioral explanations underlying these findings, their practical implications and future work are also discussed in the paper.
Assessing the influence of repeated exposures and mental stress on human wayfinding performance in indoor environments using virtual reality technology
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Citation Excerpt :
Sufficient sample size is critical to yield statistically meaningful conclusions. Considering that typical sample size for each group is 16, 32 or 64 in experimental psychology studies [67], and that the sample size for each group ranged between 7 and 20 in most prior wayfinding and evacuation behavior studies [45,50,68], we decided to have 16 participants in each group. This sample size satisfied the sample size requirements of Anderson Darling test [69], Mann-Whitney U test [44] and Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test [59].
This study aimed to examine the effect of repeated exposures to indoor environments on people’s indoor wayfinding performance, both under normal condition and during fire emergency which could induce significant mental stress. Indoor wayfinding experiments were conducted in an immersive virtual museum developed using virtual reality technologies. Participants of the experiments were divided into three groups, who participated in one, two and three trials, respectively. Those who participated in more than one trial were given an interval of two weeks between two consecutive trials. Each trial of the experiment included a treasure hunting task and an egress task. Participants were presented with a virtual fire emergency during the egress task of their last trial. Data of wayfinding performance measures of the participants, as well as their physiological and emotional responses, sense of direction, wayfinding anxiety and simulator sickness were collected and analyzed. The results revealed significant positive impact of repeated exposure on participants’ wayfinding performance, which resulted in a decrease in the time needed to complete the treasure hunting task. The results also revealed significant negative impact of mental stressed caused by the fire emergency on participants’ wayfinding performance, which led to increased travel time and distance during egress. Such negative impact of stress, however, could be noticeably diminished by the repeated exposures, showing significant interaction effect between these two factors.
Acquisition of spatial knowledge through self-directed interaction with a virtual model of a multi-level building: Effects of training and individual differences
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Knowledge about complex spatial structures can be acquired through self-directed interaction with virtual models. In the present study, interactive controls enabled flexible exploration of desktop virtual multi-level building models from an allocentric perspective (providing zoom, rotation, and selection of building levels) as well as from the egocentric perspective (providing virtual movement). Short-time training for deliberate exploration were investigated with respect to spatial knowledge acquisition (N = 115, 59 females and 56 males). Four training conditions were included: (1) no training, (2) interaction with a training model with a basic exploration task, (3) cognitive prompts stimulating organisation of spatial information, (4) cognitive and meta-cognitive prompts stimulating planning and controlling the exploration activity. In addition, spatial abilities, real-world spatial strategies and computer game experience were considered as aptitudes. Aptitude variables explained up to 30% of the variance in spatial learning and mediated an effect of sex. Training explained up to 10% of the variance in spatial learning. Qualified training with prompts (conditions 3, 4) did not improve spatial learning compared with training with the basic task (condition 2). Training strongly diminished the role of aptitudes.
Passive and active navigation of virtual environments vs. traditional printed evacuation maps: A comparative evaluation in the aviation domain
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Citation Excerpt :
We could not clearly determine whether knowledge of the seat position in the VE conditions was gained mainly through navigation in the VE, observation of the seat map, or a combination of the two sources. While the seat map should have been the most efficient means to gain survey knowledge (Philbin et al., 1998; Richardson et al., 1999), the relatively small size of the environment could have made it possible to directly gain survey knowledge from the VE (Rossano et al., 1999; Witmer et al., 2002). A brief interview at the end of the study gives credit to this hypothesis, revealing that most participants in the VE conditions focused mainly on the VE and glanced at the map once in a while to get confirmation of their current position.
Printed maps are the most common tool to prepare people for emergency evacuation in contexts such as public buildings or transportation. Unfortunately, they are poorly understood and often ignored by people. Virtual environments (VEs) could be a more effective method to support people in acquiring spatial knowledge about the real-world environment to evacuate. This paper pursues three main goals. First, we propose a VE-based tool to support spatial knowledge acquisition for evacuation purposes, using aviation as a real-world domain in which such knowledge is crucial for passengers’ safety. Second, we study in detail one of the VE design choices (active or passive navigation), comparing a version of our tool in which users navigate by actively controlling their position with another version in which users are passively led along pre-defined routes. Third, we contrast the two versions of the tool with the traditional, printed diagrammatic map provided to passengers by airlines. Results of our study show that the VE-based approach produces objectively better spatial knowledge when users are asked to pinpoint their assigned position in the environment, and that active navigation produces a performance improvement in a subsequent virtual evacuation. Moreover, the VE-based approach is perceived as more enjoyable, easier to comprehend and more effective than printed maps when active navigation is available.
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We compared the ability of men and women to remember a path from different points of view both in “real” (WalCT) and in virtual reality environments (VR-WalCT). The main aim of the study was to compare the effects of real and virtual reality on recalling environment. A secondary aim was to detect the presence of gender-related differences in the two environments. On the basis of the literature, we did not expect differences between real and virtual WalCT. Moreover, we expected that men would perform better in both environments. Eighty college students (40 men) were assigned to real or virtual environments and had to learn four different paths and then to recall them from 8 different points of view. Results showed that when people have to remember a path from different points of view it is more difficult in a virtual than in a real environment, and that in a real environment women performed best. The results are discussed considering the different spatial strategy used by men and women to recall spatial information and on the basis of visuo-spatial working memory load.

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Regular ArticleTHE ACQUISITION OF ROUTE AND SURVEY KNOWLEDGE FROM COMPUTER MODELS

Abstract

Journal of Environmental Psychology

Journal of Memory and Language

Cognitive Psychology

International Journal of Human–Computer Studies

Diversity within spatial cognition: strategies underlying spatial knowledge

Environment and Behavior

Cognitive mapping: knowledge of real-world distance and location information

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory

Investigating spatial choice and navigation in large-scale environments

Distortions and fluctuations in topographic memory

Memory and Cognition

Learning about urban environments

Acquiring spatial knowledge: survey versus route-based knowledge in unfamiliar environments

Annals of the Association American Geographers

Principles of spatial problem solving

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

Cognitive maps: encoding and decoding information

Annals of the American Association of American Geographers

Regular Article
THE ACQUISITION OF ROUTE AND SURVEY KNOWLEDGE FROM COMPUTER MODELS