Comparing Spatial Navigation and Human Environment Interaction in Virtual Reality vs. Identical Real Environments across the Adult Lifespan
Saleh Kalantari, Bill Tong Xu, Armin Mostafavi, Anne Seoyoung Lee, Qi, Yang

TL;DR
This study compares human wayfinding and environmental interaction in virtual reality versus real-world settings across different ages, revealing significant behavioral differences but similar spatial uncertainty patterns, highlighting VR's limitations for ecological validity.
Contribution
It provides a direct comparison of VR and real-world environment interactions in a complex setting, emphasizing the need for cautious interpretation of VR data for real-world applications.
Findings
Significant differences in wayfinding measures between VR and real environments.
No significant age-related differences in VR versus real responses.
Similar spatial uncertainty patterns in VR and real environments.
Abstract
Virtual reality (VR) is increasingly being used as a research platform for investigating human responses to environmental variables. While VR provides tremendous advantages in terms of variable isolation and manipulation, and ease of data-collection, some researchers have expressed concerns about the ecological validity of VR-based findings. In the current study we replicated a real-world, multi-level educational facility in VR, and compared data collected in the VR and real-world environments as participants (n=36) completed identical wayfinding tasks. We found significant differences in all of the measures used, including distance covered, number of mistakes made, time for task completion, spatial memory, extent of backtracking, observation of directional signs, perceived uncertainty levels, perceived cognitive workload, and perceived task difficulty. We also analyzed potential…
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Taxonomy
TopicsSpatial Cognition and Navigation · Urban Green Space and Health · Noise Effects and Management
