TY - JOUR PY - 2002// TI - Three dimensional spatial memory and learning in real and virtual environments JO - Spatial cognition and computation A1 - Oman, Charles M. A1 - Shebilske, Wayne L. A1 - Richards, Jason T. A1 - Tubre, Travis C. A1 - Beall, Andrew C. A1 - Natapoff, Alan SP - 355 EP - 372 VL - 2 IS - 4 N2 - 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.

Language: en

LA - en SN - 1387-5868 UR - http://dx.doi.org/ ID - ref1 ER -