# Perceived spatial presence and body orientation affect the recall of out-of-sight places in an immersive sketching experiment

## TL;DR

This study shows that how people sketch maps of familiar places in virtual reality is influenced by their body orientation and perceived spatial presence.

## Contribution

The study introduces 'immersive sketching' as a novel VR-based method to investigate spatial memory and body orientation effects.

## Key findings

- Immersive sketching in VR confirms position-dependent recall of distant places.
- Sketch map orientation depends on the subject's body orientation in VR.
- Alignment with the target direction strengthens spatial recall, while opposite orientation weakens it.

## Abstract

The orientation of sketch maps of remote but familiar city squares produced from memory has been shown to depend on the distance and airline direction from the production site to the remembered square (position-dependent recall, Röhrich et al. in PLoS One 9(11): e112793, 2014). Here, we present a virtual reality version of the original experiment and additionally study the role of body orientation. Three main points can be made: First, “immersive sketching” is a novel and useful paradigm in which subjects sketch maps live on paper while being immersed in virtual reality. Second, the original effect of position-dependent recall was confirmed, indicating that the sense of being present at a particular location, even if generated in a virtual environment, suffices to bias the imagery of distant places. Finally, the orientation of the produced sketch maps depended also on the body orientation of the subjects. At each production site, body orientation was controlled by varying the position of the live feed in the virtual environment, such that subjects had to turn towards the prescribed direction. Position-dependent recall is strongest if subjects are aligned with the airline direction to the target and virtually goes away if they turn in the opposite direction. We conclude that the representation of out-of-sight target places depends on both the current airline direction to the target and the body orientation.