The Effects Of Scene Type And Pre-cruise Information On Spatial Memor

Navigation is an essential activity in our life,grasping information in unfamiliar environment and acquiring space knowledge,is the key to outings.It has been well established that landmarks play a critical role in the process of acquiring environmental information.Previous studies that examined environment types on route or spatial memory mostly used paper maps as experimental materials,and the amount of information conveyed on the maps was used as a criterion for classifying environment,then some imperfect results were obtained through one-sided indicators.However,the map conveys different information from the actual spatially contextualized threedimensional environment.In recent years,the development of virtual environments has made it possible to better achieve effective control of visual content and accurate collection of behavioral data,and to a considerable extent to serve as an alternative to real environments.Based on this,this study is proposed to further investigate the effect of scene type on the acquisition of spatial knowledge at each level with the help of a virtual environment.Experiment 1 examined the difference in participants’ spatial knowledge acquisition in two types of scenes(rich and simple).A one-way between-subjects design was used,with scene type as the independent variable and the dependent variables was the behavioral data of the participants under each measurement task and the eye-movement indicators recorded by Tobii TX300 eyetracker during the learning process.Firstly,58 participants with middle spatial ability were selected by questionnaire to enter the formal experiment,which was divided into three stages:practice,learn,and test.The practice phase required the participants to be familiar with the relevant operations and navigation cues in the formal experiment.During the learning phase,the participants completed a movement from the starting point to the end point with voice guidance,and the participants’ eye movement information was recorded during this period.Then participants were required to complete each spatial task in turn.The results of Experiment 1 found that participants in rich environment outperformed than those in simple on the route retracing task,the map drawing task and the recognition task.The scenes of experiment 2 remains the same as that of experiment 1.Based on Experiment1,it was further examined whether the information about the map’s/description’s/map and description combination obtained before navigation in different types of scenes would have different effects on participants’ spatial perception.A 2(scene type: rich/simple)× 3(information type before navigation: map/description/map+description)between-subjects design was used,and a total of 82 participants with moderate spatial ability were selected to participate in the formal experiment,with the same apparatus and tasks as in Experiment 1.Experiment 2 found that participants in the map information condition gazed at roads significantly more than buildings,while the difference between the two in the description information condition was not significant;and the combination of map+description information in the rich scene led to the best performance in the landmark ordering task,while in the simple scene,participants in the map information condition performed best in the landmark ordering task.The results of the study found that(1)Participants in the rich scene learning condition had better memory performance on both survey and landmark knowledge compared to the simple environment with less referable information.(2)Compared to females,males are more beneficial for landmark knowledge acquisition.Map information was most helpful for men to form global knowledge,while women’s global knowledge acquisition relied more on descriptive information.(3)The combination of map + description information in rich scenes was most able to help participants form route memories,and map information alone was sufficient to form better route memories in simple scenes.(4)When presented with map information before navigation,participants focused more attention on the road;increased gaze on the building area when presented with descriptive information before navigation.