@article{ref1,
title="Three dimensional spatial memory and learning in real and virtual environments",
journal="Spatial cognition and computation",
year="2002",
author="Oman, Charles M. and Shebilske, Wayne L. and Richards, Jason T. and Tubre, Travis C. and Beall, Andrew C. and Natapoff, Alan",
volume="2",
number="4",
pages="355-372",
abstract="Human orientation and spatial cognition partly depends on our ability to remember sets of visual landmarks and imagine their relationship to us from a different viewpoint. We normally make large body rotations only about a single axis which is aligned with gravity. However, astronauts who try to recognize environments rotated in 3 dimensions report that their terrestrial ability to imagine the relative orientation of remembered landmarks does not easily generalize. The ability of human subjects to learn to mentally rotate a simple array of six objects around them was studied in 1-G laboratory experiments. Subjects were tested in a cubic chamber (n = 73) and a equivalent virtual environment (n = 24), analogous to the interior of a space station node module. A picture of an object was presented at the center of each wall. Subjects had to memorize the spatial relationships among the six objects and learn to predict the direction to a specific object if their body were in a specified 3D orientation. Percent correct learning curves and response times were measured. Most subjects achieved high accuracy from a given viewpoint within 20 trials, regardless of roll orientation, and learned a second view direction with equal or greater ease. Performance of the subject group that used a head mounted display/head tracker was qualitatively similar to that of the second group tested in a physical node simulator. Body position with respect to gravity had a significant but minor effect on performance of each group, suggesting that results may also apply to weightless situations. A correlation was found between task performance measures and conventional paper-and-pencil tests of field independence and 2&3 dimensional figure rotation ability.<p /><p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="1387-5868",
doi="",
url="http://dx.doi.org/"
}