Navigating worlds: How children develop spatial skills in virtual reality and real life

Presentation Type

Abstract

Faculty Advisor

Yingying Yang

Access Type

Event

Start Date

25-4-2025 10:30 AM

End Date

25-4-2025 11:30 AM

Description

Spatial navigation, a crucial cognitive ability, helps individuals orient and maneuver through their surroundings using landmark, route, and survey knowledge. Studying these knowledge forms is essential to understanding children's spatial navigation, a debated topic (Pullano & Foti, 2022; Kim & Bock, 2021). Virtual Reality (VR) helps study spatial navigation; however, its real-world (RL) comparability is debated due to limited sensory feedback (van der Ham et al., 2015; Dong et al., 2022). This study explored children’s spatial navigation abilities within and across RL and non-immersive VR. Sixty-one children (ages 6-10) completed counterbalanced spatial navigation tasks in RL and VR environments. After viewing three paths per environment, participants were tested on landmark, route, and survey knowledge. Pearson's correlations and partial correlations (controlling for age and gender) assessed spatial knowledge associations within and across environments. Participants recalled more landmarks in RL (M = .44, SD = .19) than VR (M = .32, SD = .18). The point-to-start task was more accurate in RL (M = .53, SD = .24) than VR (M = .09, SD = .16). Route knowledge and the map recognition task performance was better in VR (M = .91, SD = .10; M = .25, SD = .44) than RL (M = .87, SD = .12; M = .20, SD = .40). Within RL, route knowledge correlated with the point-to-start task, r(60) = .41, p < .001, but no significant associations emerged in VR. Across environments, the point-to-start task and landmark knowledge were correlated, r(59) = .58, p < .001; r(59) = .60, p = .031. After controlling for gender and age, the point-to-start task showed no significant relationship between environments.

Comments

Poster presentation at the 2025 Student Research Symposium.

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Apr 25th, 10:30 AM Apr 25th, 11:30 AM

Navigating worlds: How children develop spatial skills in virtual reality and real life

Spatial navigation, a crucial cognitive ability, helps individuals orient and maneuver through their surroundings using landmark, route, and survey knowledge. Studying these knowledge forms is essential to understanding children's spatial navigation, a debated topic (Pullano & Foti, 2022; Kim & Bock, 2021). Virtual Reality (VR) helps study spatial navigation; however, its real-world (RL) comparability is debated due to limited sensory feedback (van der Ham et al., 2015; Dong et al., 2022). This study explored children’s spatial navigation abilities within and across RL and non-immersive VR. Sixty-one children (ages 6-10) completed counterbalanced spatial navigation tasks in RL and VR environments. After viewing three paths per environment, participants were tested on landmark, route, and survey knowledge. Pearson's correlations and partial correlations (controlling for age and gender) assessed spatial knowledge associations within and across environments. Participants recalled more landmarks in RL (M = .44, SD = .19) than VR (M = .32, SD = .18). The point-to-start task was more accurate in RL (M = .53, SD = .24) than VR (M = .09, SD = .16). Route knowledge and the map recognition task performance was better in VR (M = .91, SD = .10; M = .25, SD = .44) than RL (M = .87, SD = .12; M = .20, SD = .40). Within RL, route knowledge correlated with the point-to-start task, r(60) = .41, p < .001, but no significant associations emerged in VR. Across environments, the point-to-start task and landmark knowledge were correlated, r(59) = .58, p < .001; r(59) = .60, p = .031. After controlling for gender and age, the point-to-start task showed no significant relationship between environments.