Map-based Missalignment effect in Virtual Spatial Navigation

Background and Aim : Finding the way through a complex environment is a fundamental cognitive ability that relies on spatial cognition processes such as perception, remembering, reasoning in space and time, and motor functions. Spatial navigation is a multi-sensory process that includes integrating and manipulating information that comes from externalized and internalized representations to guide behaviors. An important issue in spatial navigation is the difficulty that people face during their navigation using maps, which is called misalignment 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 : Participants were 18 undergraduate students of age between 20 and 35m without any severe astigmatism or mental difficulty. The Walking Corsi Test was implemented to measure topographic spatial ability. The task consisted of three trials that were conducted to test the proposed research hypotheses. Then, a navigation task in a simulated head Mounted virtual environment was conducted through a within-subject factor. Participants were asked to find three pre-specified destinations 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 : Statistically significant differences were observed in some navigational variables in three different degrees. Several variables were measured for each degree, including the orientation of the first step toward the destination in their first and second exposure to each map, the number of requests for appearing a map while navigating, the number of times and the total time being in the map zones during the whole task and within each trial, and the total navigation time. Friedman’s Chi-Square Test results indicated that there was no statistical difference in the amount of none of the above variables in three different degrees except the total navigation time. However, people faced with more confusion when exposing to the misalignment of ‘45’, while there was no highlighted difference between the 0 and 180 misalignments degrees. Spatial abilities scored by Walking Corsi Test were highly correlated with most of the variables. Also, men and women were not different in their navigational variables, though there was a significant difference between their spatial ability scores.Conclusion : Navigational or confusion patterns appeared to be correlated with the participant’s spatial topographical ability and Gender, which shows the importance of considering gender differences as a plausible effective factor in such studies. Also, that participants have spent more total time when running the 45 degree than 0 and 180 one highlights 45 or any other non-perpendicular degree compared to perpendicular ones, which can be in favor of those hypotheses saying that participants will use this extra time for three tasks of identifying the misalignment effect, retrieving appropriate strategy to solve that from their memory, and executing the solution. Therefore, any cognitive training to reduce the misalignment effect in non-perpendicular situations might be of benefit in the performance in any area which involves making complex decisions.

Keywords:

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