Missalignment Effect in the Spatial Navigation using Virtual Reality

Background and Aim: Finding the way through a complex environment is a fundamental cognitive ability which relies on spatial cognition processes such as perception, remembering, reasoning in space and time, and motor functions. Spatial navigation is a multi-sensory process which includes integrating and manipulating information that comes from externalized and internalized representations, by perceiving spatial information from maps, creating and maintaining spatial representations in short and long term memories, and using or manipulating these representations to guide behaviors. An important issue in spatial navigation is the difficulty that people face with during their navigation using maps which is called Missalignment Effect. The alignment effect happens if there is any deviation between the up direction on the map and the viewer's head-direction in the environment. Methods Participant were ۱۸ undergraduate students of age between ۲۰ and ۳۵, without any severe astigmatism or mental difficulty. The Walking Corsi Test was implemented to measure topographic spatial ability. Then, in a containing walls, passageways and maps. The task consisted of three trials was conducted to test the proposed research hypotheses. Then, a navigation task in a simulated Head Mounted virtual environment was conducted through a within-subject design with the missalignment angle (۰, ۴۵, and ۱۸۰ degrees) as the within-subject factor. Participants was asked to find three pre-specified destination using the maps located on their way to the three destinations. Finally, a questionnaire to test the presence, immersion, usability and motion sickness of the designed task was filled out. Results: The main objective of this study was to see whether the navigational behaviour of the participants is affected by the misalignemt between the map orientation and the cardinal, i.e., geographical, orientation of the environment. The second objective was to see if this effect is a function of the missalignment angle. The third one was to investigate the relationship between the spatial abilities of the participants and amount of those navigational behaviours which are affected by the misalignment effect when finding some pespecified destinations. Conclusion Statistically significant differences were observed in navigational variables in three different degrees. People faced with more confusion when exposing to the misalignment of ۴۵', while there was no highlighted difference between the ۰ and ۱۸۰ misalignments degrees. The navigational or confusion patterns appeared to be correlated with the participant's spatial topographical ability and Gender.

Keywords:

Spatial Cognition , Virtual Reality , Navigation , Map , Misalignment Effect