Visual Immersiveness on Spatial Understanding

Visual immersiveness was found to significantly influence spatial understanding while interactivity had no significant influence. First, the insignificance of interactivity on spatial understanding could be attributed to how information is received and

comprehended in the real world, which is mostly through visual and auditory means. While interaction itself may play a role in obtaining spatial information, visual and auditory processes can function at comprehending information without the need for movement as discovered in the study conducted by Balakrishnan et al. (2012).

Second, the significant impact of visual immersiveness was driven mainly by field of view. The stereoscopy manipulation had no significant impact on spatial understanding measures. Similar to the rationale for the role of visual immersiveness on spatial

experiences, attention and the ability to block out the real-world could help negate the effects of stereoscopy on spatial understanding. Another reason why stereoscopy did not attain significance could be due to type of task utilized, an object search task. Added depth may not have aided locating objects in the space whereas a wider view could. Considering visual immersiveness as the outcome of independent technology factors as described in the spatial experience section, it is necessary to examine the relationship of spatial understanding measures with visual immersiveness closer.

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Although not significant, interactivity could have impacted how visual

immersiveness influenced spatial task performance. First, only field of view was found to significantly influence spatial task performance but, not as the hypotheses originally predicted. Spatial task performance included several measures focused on measuring configurational knowledge based on participant exploration. The measures of

configurational knowledge found to be significantly influenced by field of view included area proportion error, area ratio, length and width ratios, and layout accuracy. On all measures of configurational knowledge, field of view adversely influenced accuracy meaning that a wider field of view produced more errors. These findings could be considered to show that survey knowledge was not completely developed during navigation of the space as predicted.

Looking closer at each measure, the mean differences were not large between the field of view conditions except for area proportion error. This could be due to the

multiplying effect of length and width scores forming the overall area proportion score. Looking at the area ratio differences, a wider field of view actually showed better

accuracy than a narrow field of view. Individually, the findings of width and length ratios (indicators of over or underestimation) better supported the idea that a wider field of view is known to cause scaling issues found in the area proportion error. Stanney et al. (2013) pointed out that optic flow motion cues can lead to overestimation of distances,

suggesting that proprioceptive motion cues were better suited for better interpretation of spatial information.

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The findings for space estimation also differ from previous research which, looked at the accuracy of dimensions from a single room and found a wider field of view to associate more with overestimation (Balakrishnan, et al., 2012). A possible explanation could be due to the incorporation of interactivity as part of the search task. In the low navigability condition, the participant was limited and the viewpoint perspective was always level. Even though the implementation of high navigability condition mimicked real-world head movements, an important point needs to be noted. In the real world our heads are able to move and the representation of space is not perceived as distorted in our brains. However, an interactive virtual environment attempting to mimic real world head motions can create a slight distortion depending on the viewpoint. This was the case in this study where participants found it challenging to re-align the viewpoint after using the head-tilt manipulation, possibly causing a distorted view of the space. Alternately, for length over and under estimation, a wider field of view was found to associate with underestimations of the spaces. The differences in the findings from this study and previous studies could be due to the nature in which individuals were able to gather spatial information. In the Zikic (2007) study, the simulation was paused and participants were asked to estimate the still space.

There are two key differences between these studies: 1) participants were asked to fill in estimations in individual spaces directly after experiencing them, and 2) movement was paused to allow for participants to estimate the spaces. This presents an important methodological challenge when including visual immersiveness and interactivity in the same study. When visually immersed, pulling a viewer away from the simulation to

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momentarily fill out a question could reduce the overall accuracy by pulling the user out of the experience of the space. The issue of interactivity however, may increase accuracy but, will not be seen as a realistic behavior within the space. An individual may stop to take in the details of a virtual space when conducting a task but, to be forced to stop may become less natural.

5.2.3.2 Spatial Recall

The findings of the influence of field of view on spatial recall confirmed the prediction that a wider field of view would improve recall accuracy. The findings should be considered in light of the measures that comprised spatial recall: object memory and route memory. Both measures were found to be positively influenced by a wider field of view but, only when controlling for different factors. In the case of object memory, familiarity with 3D and video games was a significant covariate. Removing the influence of an individual’s familiarity with 3D and video games allowed for the findings of field of view to be more prominent. Considering the role of field of view, with a wider field of view, more of the space was visible to the viewer at one time allowing for better

associations of the object to each space to be made.

For cued route memory, object memory was controlled as a significant covariate. As the participants were focused on the object locating task, attention and focus were placed on locating the objects. By accounting for the influence of attention to the object finding task, the individual influences of field of view on cued route memory became clearer. Similar to the findings with object memory, with cued route recall, a wider field of view allowed for more of the spaces to be seen at any given time providing more

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spatial cues to be presented to the participant. The more spatial cues presented could provide a base for participants to generate landmarks for remembering spaces. This allowed for easier processing of remembering of the route taken to visit each of the spaces.

In the literature, navigation tasks for gaining route knowledge were found to be successful with concurrent tasks. Wen et al. (2013) found there was no significant trade- off between concurrent task types based on whether it was visual, verbal, or spatial when developing route knowledge. This suggests that while searching for the objects, the participants were able to generate a mental map that better allowed for memory of the route taken to find the objects. In this study, there was no significance for the free recall of route. This could be attributed to the free recall of the route being dependent on the participant to successfully construct the configurational knowledge of the space in their cognitive maps.