Spatial cognition
Do compasses or distant mountains help people learn a new place?
Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC
Giving people a compass or a visible mountain range while they learned a virtual campus did not improve their memory for its layout.
Study at a glance
- Design
- Human experiment — Two between-subjects experiments in immersive VR on an omnidirectional treadmill: compass vs no cue (Exp 1), mountain range vs compass (Exp 2), with Bayesian tests.
- N
- N=123 · Pointing-task samples: 56 in Experiment 1 (29 compass, 27 control) and 67 in Experiment 2 (36 mountain, 31 compass); model-building samples were slightly smaller (54 and 61).
- Population
- Undergraduate students at the University of Florida.
- Outcome
- Pointing error between buildings and map accuracy (bidimensional regression R squared) after learning a virtual campus.
Structured fields used in claim comparison tables when every cited study has a complete layer.
Key findings
In Experiment 1 Bayesian tests gave moderate evidence that the compass made no difference to pointing error or map accuracy. In Experiment 2 the mountain range was no better than the compass, and combining both experiments still showed no benefit of any cue. People oriented their maps to the direction of the first route they walked rather than to the cue. Men and video-game players performed better overall, but neither group benefited more from the cues.
Methodology
Students wearing a VR headset walked on an omnidirectional treadmill through Virtual Silcton, a virtual campus, learning the locations of eight buildings along set routes. In Experiment 1 some had a virtual compass on their controller and others had no cue; in Experiment 2 some saw a distant mountain range and others had a compass pointing the same way. Afterwards they pointed from each building to the others and built a map by dragging buildings into place.
Limitations
The samples were young college students from a flat part of the U.S., who may not be used to using mountains for orientation. Experiment 2 had no no-cue control, so the combined analysis compares groups from different semesters and is exploratory. The mountain range was not very visible from route starting points and participants were not made to look around, so some may have noticed it late. The environment may already have offered enough landmarks and body-based cues that a global cue was unnecessary, so the results may not apply to sparser settings.
How this study connects
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