ABSTRACT

We report on a study in which we examine if the visual design of virtual environments (VEs) affects visuospatial knowledge acquisition in younger and older adults with varying cognitive abilities in the context of navigational learning, specifically when a perspective switch is involved. Perspective switch between first-person and aerial-views is an important and commonly executed task in navigation; and it is a special case in studying the effects of aging on navigational performance as well, because, reportedly, it is particularly harder for older people. In a controlled experiment, our participants learned a route in first-person view VE, and reproduced what they learned in an aerial-perspective view in immediate and delayed recall stages. To examine the effects of (and interactions between) multiple factors involved in the experiment in relation to the given task, we provide an in-depth investigation of group differences in spatial knowledge acquisition when a perspective switch is required based on age, mental rotation abilities, and visuospatial memory capacity with three VE designs that differ in levels of realism. Our findings based on the recall accuracy of 81 (42 younger, 39 older) participants in sketching tasks demonstrate significant differences across VE types, overall, in favor of our custom-designed VE in this demanding task. Furthermore, we demonstrate that age and visuospatial memory abilities are strong moderating factors, explicitly in this sketching task that requires a perspective switch, irrespective of VE types.

摘要

我们在研究报告中，我们检查，如果虚拟环境（VES）的视觉设计会影响年轻和年长的成年人视觉空间知识获取与导航学习的角度变化的认知能力，特别是当涉及到透视开关时。第一人称视角与空中视角之间的视角切换是导航中一项重要且通常执行的任务；这也是研究衰老对导航性能的影响的特例，因为据报道，这对老年人来说尤其困难。在一项受控实验中，我们的参与者在第一人称视角VE中学习了一条路线，并在即时和延迟召回阶段以空中视角复制了他们所学到的知识。为了检查与给定任务相关的实验中涉及的多个因素（及其之间的相互作用）的影响，我们根据年龄，心理旋转能力对需要进行视角转换的空间知识获取中的群体差异进行了深入研究。 ，三种具有不同现实水平的VE设计的视觉空间存储容量。我们基于81位（42位年轻，39位年龄较大）的素描任务参与者的召回准确度得出的结果表明，总体而言，VE类型之间存在显着差异，这有利于我们在此艰巨任务中定制设计的VE。此外，我们证明年龄和视觉空间记忆能力是强大的调节因素，在此草图绘制任务中，无论VE类型如何，都需要透视切换。