Human navigation is an ability central to many activities. A prevalent hypothesis for different navigation strategies is the cognitive maps hypothesis, which is a complex navigation strategy that...Show moreHuman navigation is an ability central to many activities. A prevalent hypothesis for different navigation strategies is the cognitive maps hypothesis, which is a complex navigation strategy that relies on survey knowledge of the environment and involves the formation of mental representations, allowing navigators to efficiently and flexibly navigate through different strategies to reach any target location. Learning plays a crucial role in the development of navigation abilities, with individual differences observed. This thesis aims to explore the relationship between learning and navigation performance in real-life and virtual environments among Mbendjele BaYaka children, a hunter-gatherer community from the Congo Basin that relies on daily navigation for collecting food and has little experience with technology. I will focus on travel speed, contributing to our understanding of the suitability of virtual reality (VR) for spatial navigation research. The virtual navigation experiment involved children playing a computer game to find and collect food items in a three-dimensional virtual environment. The real-life navigation experiment included partially the same children participating in a real-life honey-finding game. Both experiments have been set up to investigate different spatial skills and their impact on navigation performance among children ranging in age from 4 to 16. My research took advantage of the fact that certain navigation tasks in this experiment were identical, namely repeated returns to the same location. The research investigates the travel speed of children, using linear mixed models to analyse the effect of trial number on spatial learning while controlling for age and comparing their spatial performances in real and virtual environments. The results showed that trial number and session had different effects in each setting, and there was no correlation between real-life and virtual navigation performance. This shows that more research is needed to improve study design, to make environments more similar, and to make reward moments more congruent.Show less
This study examined the interface design of an augmented reality (AR) system that was being developed by the Dutch Police Force to assist police officers on horseback in navigating unknown terrain....Show moreThis study examined the interface design of an augmented reality (AR) system that was being developed by the Dutch Police Force to assist police officers on horseback in navigating unknown terrain. The main research objective was to investigate the effect of visual notifications on the officers’ responsiveness to navigation-assisting stimuli (i.e. ‘user performance’). These stimuli consisted of buzzer sounds and direction indicators. Since navigation support was the primary goal of the interface, attention focused on navigation-supporting stimuli was regarded endogenous. Because information provision was a secondary goal, attention drawn to notifications was regarded exogenous. To investigate the influence of exogenous stimuli on the quality of endogenous information processing, a virtual environment was created. In this environment, ninety-nine participants walked both a route with notifications and a route without notifications. (Endogenous) response times of both conditions were compared to determine the effect of the exogenous stimuli. Subsequently, both the role of timing and the effect of endogenous-exogenous competition on travel speed were investigated. Several repeated measures analyses of variance have been conducted. Exogenous stimuli were found to have a significant negative effect on user performance, F(1,87) = 11.193, p = .001, η2 = .114. In addition, the range between approximately 600 and 1000 milliseconds before the appearance of endogenous stimuli is probably the region in which endogenous user performance starts to be prone to exogenous stimuli, F(1,9) = 10.005, p = .011, η2 = .526. Lastly, it turned out that notifications caused participants to run faster, F(1,86) = 8.162, p < .05, η2 = .087. This study showed that stimuli in AR interfaces can enhance the travel speed of users. This is a desirable effect, since it is important for police officers to arrive at their destination as quickly as possible. This study also showed that exogenous stimuli can decrease user performance, as a result of which they could jeopardize users and others in the (traffic) environment. However, this study also provided an indication of the timing range in which exogenous stimuli are most likely to cause this undesired effect. Based on this range, timing-related blockages of distracting stimuli can be built into AR systems in an effective and efficient way, through which the performance-reducing effect of exogenous stimuli could be avoided. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- In deze studie is onderzoek gedaan naar een ‘augmented reality’ (AR) navigatie systeem dat de politie wil gebruiken bij evenementen. Met de AR technologie kan door middel van een digitale bril een virtuele laag over het gezichtsveld van politieagenten worden geplaatst. Deze laag bestaat deels uit richtingaanwijzers en deels uit notificaties. Hierdoor kunnen politieagenten worden geholpen met het vinden van de weg en kunnen zij daarnaast worden geïnformeerd over de omgeving of noodsituaties. Het effect van notificaties op de ‘gebruikersprestatie’, die aan de hand van reactietijden is gemeten, stond centraal in dit onderzoek. Het idee hierachter is dat de gebruikersprestatie iets zegt over de mate waarin iemand zich kan concentreren op de richtingaanwijzers en het verkeer. Dit is onderzocht aan de hand van een virtuele omgeving, waarin participanten zowel een route met notificaties als een route zonder notificaties hebben gelopen. Het onderzoek heeft aangetoond dat de snelheid waarmee de participanten door de virtuele omgeving liepen door de notificaties werd verhoogd. Dit is een gewenst effect, omdat het in noodsituaties van belang is dat politieagenten snel ter plaatse zijn. Ook is gebleken dat het tonen van notificaties de gebruikersprestatie verlaagt, hetgeen een ongewenst effect is omdat het in het kader van de navigatiedoelstelling en de verkeersveiligheid belangrijk is dat politieagenten snel op richtingaanwijzers en hun omgeving kunnen reageren. Echter kwam uit het onderzoek ook naar voren dat de gebruikersprestatie minder sterk werd beïnvloed wanneer een notificatie minimaal 1000 milliseconden na een navigatie-ondersteunend signaal werd weergegeven dan wanneer een notificatie maximaal 600 milliseconden na een dergelijk signaal werd weergegeven. Dit resultaat stelt ontwerpers van AR-systemen in staat om te voorkomen dat notificaties de gebruikersprestatie verlagen, omdat zij op basis van deze informatie een specifiek kader hebben waarmee zij notificaties afhankelijk van hun timing tijdelijk kunnen blokkeren. Zo kan op een effectieve en efficiënte manier worden voorkomen dat agenten op kwetsbare momenten worden afgeleid, zonder dat dit ten koste gaat van tijdige communicatie van informatie die de agenten nodig hebben om hun overige taken uit te voeren.Show less
Spatial cognition deficits can be caused by various factors including aging, neurodegenerative disease, stroke, or TBI, and have thus far received inadequate attention in the literature. This study...Show moreSpatial cognition deficits can be caused by various factors including aging, neurodegenerative disease, stroke, or TBI, and have thus far received inadequate attention in the literature. This study aims to further our understanding of spatial cognition in order to progress the field and assist in the assessment and diagnostics of associated deficits in affected populations. Research has outlined the practicality of VR in assessing cognitive complaints. VR can provide ecological validity to navigation assessments and can be used alongside neuropsychological tools to further understand cognitive deficits. Therefore, the objectives of this study were to investigate the relationships of presence and subjective navigation ability with objective navigation performance in VR, and to further examine the effect of gender on navigation performance. The van der Ham et al. (2020) online task battery was used to assess spatial navigation ability by requiring participants to complete five tasks testing landmark, location and path knowledge. The experiment was conducted online on a computer or phone screen. Sense of presence in the virtual environment and subjective navigation ability were measured using the IPQ (Schubert, Friedmann, and Regenbrecht, 2001) and the WQ (Claessen et al., 2016). A test-retest design was employed to investigate the gender differences in performance over time. The results of this study indicate that presence is not a significant predictor of navigation performance in the VR task. However, subjective navigation ability did predict objective navigation performance. Additionally, gender differences were found in performance over time, with males consistently performing better than females. These findings suggest a need to further investigate the different navigation mechanisms used by males and females, and the effect that stereotypical beliefs have on performance. In conclusion, this study determined that assessment of navigation abilities is not affected by experienced presence, and thus can be made accessible in an online format. The findings for gender differences and the relationship between subjective navigation ability and objective navigation performance also have the potential to contribute evidence-based improvements in assessments, diagnostics and rehabilitation interventions. Further research is required to investigate the effect of different levels of immersion on sense of presence and performance as this could affect VR assessment of navigation.Show less
The Internet, and in particular the World Wide Web, has become the primary source of information for a substantial number of people in the world. In many libraries, computers have taken over the...Show moreThe Internet, and in particular the World Wide Web, has become the primary source of information for a substantial number of people in the world. In many libraries, computers have taken over the main task of access to information and have pushed books to the periphery. But ever since its beginnings in 1990, the Web has changed and so have the ways we use it. An analysis of the Web's (cyber)space through graph theory can help identify how these changes have come about, and in what direction they are expected to push the Web in the future. The modern search engine, the Web 2.0 revolution, cloud computing and the shift to mobile devices have shifted the nodal structure and nodal features of the Web, which is expressed in a shift from exploration to information-retrieval, and from informational to largely social uses. Increasingly, the dynamic nature of websites has decoupled the content from the form, resulting in a lack of accountability of authors towards their web pages, which are claimed to be the result of “objective” algorithms. This supposed objectivity obscures the process of centralisation on the Web, in which the hubs are getting stronger and absorb traffic. As a result, there is a loss of associative data between non-hub web pages. The growing schism between form and content also makes it harder to spatially reify the information on the Web, since content is not necessarily fixed in its location and presentation. This spatiality matters, because it greatly benefits associative understanding and memorisation of information. The realness of the virtual space of the Web is analysed and is found to be real in the sense that it has real consequences. Moreover, the application of the spatial metaphor to the inherently non-spatial digital data is shown to be vital to effective use of the Web. Several strategies and tactics are proposed to stop this reduction of space and associativity in the Web.Show less
