We designed 2D and 3D mobile maps, deployed on open Android-technology, using GPS to track movement and map interaction behavior in VR and outdoors, including ET, EEG, and GSR sensing to study spatial learning, cognitive load, visual attention, and affect in-situ during navigation.
We implemented a feedback loop to adapt a VR display based on real-time EEG response data. A gamified version was shown at a public science fair (
https://www.geo.uzh.ch/en/units/giva/services/virtual-reality-HMD.html(si apre in una nuova finestra) and
https://www.geo.uzh.ch/en/units/giva/news0/Scientifica.html(si apre in una nuova finestra)). This is available in our open science repository (
https://gitlab.uzh.ch/giva/geovisense(si apre in una nuova finestra)) and on the group’s website
https://www.geo.uzh.ch/en/units/giva/services.html(si apre in una nuova finestra).
We find:
1. Behavioural responses to mobile map designs with different landmark density may be similar while brain activity can show different response patterns. While cognitive load might steadily increase with mobile map displays that show increasingly dense landmarks along a route, behavioral responses may already plateau with a medium dense landmark display design. Aan increased parieto-occipital P3 amplitude indicates higher cognitive load in a 7-landmark condition, compared to showing only 3 or 5 landmarks. Navigators learn more in the 5- and 7-landmark conditions, compared to the 3-landmark condition. Showing a medium density of (5) landmarks, compared to 3 or 7 landmarks on a mobile map improves spatial learning without overtaxing cognitive load during navigation in different virutal urban environments.
Possibly a cognitive load spillover effect during map-assisted wayfinding occurs whereby cognitive load during map viewing might have affected cognitive load during goal-directed locomotion or vice versa. We suggest that users’ cognitive load and spatial learning should be considered together when designing the display of future navigation aids and that navigators’ eye blinks can serve as useful event makers to parse continuous human brain dynamics reflecting cognitive load in naturalistic settings.
2. Primacy and recency features of serial memory that are a hallmark of typical memory functions can also be observed in uncontrolled, real-world navigation behaviour. This suggests that general memory mechanisms are involved in spatial learning, and that landmark sequence knowledge is a feature of spatial knowledge which is affected by navigation aids.
3. While navigating with realistic-looking landmarks on a mobile map outdoors, low-spatial-ability wayfinders focused more on the landmarks in the environment and show improved directional knowledge between landmarks. Fixation event-related (EEG) potentials reveal that the amplitude of the parietal P200 component was enhanced when participants fixated landmarks in the real world that were visualized on the mobile map in a realistic style, and that frontal P200 latencies were prolonged for landmarks depicted in either a realistic or abstract style compared with features of the environment that were not presented on the map, but only for the male participants. The cognitive matching process between landmarks seen in the environment and those previously seen on a map is facilitated by the more realistic map display, while low-level perceptual processing of landmarks and recall of associated information are unaffected by map visualization style.
We find that the visualization style of landmarks on mobile map aids partially modulates wayfinders’ gaze behavior, which, in turn, can predict some aspects of spatial learning. Our studies highlight that self-reported spatial abilities are a consistent predictor of several spatial learning tasks and that individuals with lower spatial abilities are more likely to benefit from landmark visualizations with greater fidelity.
We suggest that future map-based navigation aids should focus on a visually salient depiction of landmarks to direct the attention of wayfinders with varying spatial abilities to these features for sustained spatial learning.
Taken together mobile map design decisions, including, for example, landmark visualization style or any other relevant information visualized on the navigation aid, should be adapted to wayfinders’ individual spatial abilities, their background and training, preferences, needs, and the changing environmental context (i.e. environmental familiarity, etc.).
