Effect of map viewing on spatial learning in a virtual environment

Abstract

Learning from map and navigation are believed to contribute differently towards spatial learning and result in different spatial representations. Previous studies have investigated spatial learning from navigation and from maps, but few have examined how these processes interact. The experiments reported here examine whether previewing a structural map of an environment facilitates spatial learning from navigation. We hypothesized that viewing a structural map might help people to better organize the spatial information obtained through navigation. In the experiments, participants explored a virtual environment to learn the locations of target stores, and then performed tasks to assess their egocentric and allocentric spatial knowledge. In Experiment 1, we varied whether subjects viewed a top-down structure map before exploring the environment, and found that map preview did not produce any overall benefit in spatial judgments. Experiment 2 tested a less regular village environment, and also dissociated the intrinsic axes and the map axes. We found that the map preview affected the orientation of mental representation, but there was still no improvement on overall accuracy. In Experiment 3, we created a cue conflict situation in which participants previewed a distorted map before exploring the environment, followed by the same spatial judgment tasks. We found that people had idiosyncratic biases consistent with distorted scaling of the environment, but the biases were not related to the direction of distortion in the preview maps. In Experiment 4, we changed the map preview from top-down 2D view to a perspective vista view, which would require less conversion from the perspective during navigation. Many subjects did not choose to take advantage of the vista view, and there was again no evidence improved spatial judgments with map preview. The findings from the four experiments suggest that people have difficulty integrating map knowledge with information learnt through navigation. This could be due to difficulty in translating between allocentric information from map and egocentric information from navigation.