Gender differences in cue preference during path integration in virtual environments (original) (raw)
Related papers
CyberPsychology & Behavior, 2004
Four groups of undergraduates (half of each gender) experienced a movement along a corridor containing three distinctive objects, in a virtual environment (VE) with wide-screen projection. One group simulated walking along the virtual corridor using a proprietary step-exercise device. A second group moved along the corridor in conventional flying mode, depressing a keyboard key to initiate continuous forward motion. Two further groups observed the walking and flying participants, by viewing their progress on the screen. Participants then had to walk along a real equivalent but empty corridor, and indicate the positions of the three objects. All groups underestimated distances in the real corridor, the greatest underestimates occurring for the middle distance object. Males' underestimations were significantly lower than females' at all distances. However, there was no difference between the active participants and passive observers, nor between walking and flying conditions.
Sex differences in directional cue use in a virtual landscape
Behavioral neuroscience, 2009
How males and females differ in their use of cues for spatial navigation is an important question. Although women and men appear to respond differently to close and distant objects, object features and the geometry of spaces, the common denominator of these sex-specific cue preferences is unknown. By constructing virtual landscapes from either directional (graded, gradient) or positional (pinpoint) cues, the authors tested the hypothesis that sex differences arise from preferences for cues that provide primarily direction or position, as predicted by the parallel map model of the cognitive map. Women and men learned a target location in the presence of either one or the other class of cues. Men were more accurate in estimating the target location overall, but the navigation accuracy difference between men and women was greater in the presence of directional cues. Our findings provide support for the parallel map model and suggest that the previously reported male advantage in the presence of distant objects and geometric cues derives from their function as directional cues.
Impact of gender on discrimination between real and virtual stimuli
2009
Immersive virtual environments allow users to control their virtual viewpoint by moving the tracked head or by walking through the real world. Usually, movements in the real world are mapped one-to-one to virtual camera motions. With redirection techniques, gains are applied to user movements when the virtual camera is manipulated. Since male and female persons use different strategies for spatial cognition and navigation, it sounds reasonable that these gender differences also occur for redirection techniques. In this paper we examine the impact of gender on tasks where male and female subjects have to discriminate between virtual and real stimuli. 7 male and 6 female subjects have been tested in three different experiments: discrimination between virtual and physical rotation, discrimination between virtual and physical translation and discrimination of walking direction.
2012
A previous study indicated that peripheral visual information strongly affects the judgment of egocentric distances for users of immersive virtual environments. The experiment described in this document aimed to investigate if these effects could be explained in terms of changes in gait caused by visual information in the extreme periphery. Three conditions with varying degrees of peripheral occlusion were tested and participants' walking characteristics measured. The results indicate that the improvements in distance ...
Gender differences in wayfinding in virtual environments with global or local landmarks
Journal of Environmental Psychology, 2012
This study assesses gender differences in wayfinding in environments with global or local landmarks by analyzing both overall and fine-grained measures of performance. Both female and male participants were required to locate targets in grid-like virtual environments with local or global landmarks. Interestingly, the results of the two overall measures did not converge: although females spent more time than males in locating targets, both genders were generally equivalent in terms of corrected travel path. Fine-grained measures account for different aspects of wayfinding behavior and provide additional information that explains the divergence in overall measures; females spent less time traveling away from the target location, a higher proportion of time not traversing, and made more rotations when stopping than males did. Rather than unequivocally supporting male superiority in wayfinding tasks, both the overall and fine-grained measures partially indicate that males and females are differentially superior when using global and local landmark information, respectively. To summarize, males moved faster than females but did not necessarily navigate the spatial surroundings more efficiently. Each gender showed different strengths related to wayfinding; these differences require the application of both overall and fine-grained measures for accurate assessment.
The Impact of Gender, Avatar and Height in Distance Perception in Virtual Environments
Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, 2019
Virtual Reality is becoming more popular over the years because it allows the user to be the main actor in another environment and interact with it in real time. New interaction methods are being studied, like tangible interfaces, but there is little work done related to small distances when grabbing objects through a virtual environment. This study is important because, in our perspective, interaction in virtual reality will be at arms reach, meaning that the user will interact within very close distances (under 1 m). In this paper, the research team further evaluate distance perception using gender, the presence of avatar and height (fixed or personalised). The sample consisted of 64 participants (32 females and 32 males) evenly distributed between all four conditions (8 males and 8 females for each condition). Results revealed that gender does have an impact on small distance estimation; height does not have an impact on distance estimation; and avatar does make a difference when trying to grab a real object through the virtual environment.
Effects of Travel Technique and Gender on a Divided Attention Task in a Virtual Environment
We report a user study which compared four virtual environment travel techniques using a divided attention task. Participants used either real walking, gaze-directed, pointing-directed, or torso- directed travel to follow a target through an environment while simultaneously responding to auditory stimuli. In addition to travel technique, we investigated gender as a between-subjects variable and task difficulty (simple or complex) and task type (single or divided) as within-subjects variables. Real walking allowed superior performance over the pointing-directed technique on measures of navigation task performance and recognition of stimuli presented during navigation. This indicates that participants using real walk- ing may have had more spare cognitive capacity to process and encode stimuli than those using pointing-directed travel. We also found a gender-difficulty interaction where males performed worse and responded slower to the attention task when the spatial task was more difficult, but no differences were observed for females between difficulty levels. While these results may be pertinent for the design of virtual environments, the nature and goal of the virtual environment tasks must be carefully considered to determine whether similar effects on performance can be expected under different conditions.
The effect of walking speed on the sensitivity to curved walking in an immersive Virtual Environment
2010
In the mid-20th century, Richard was working on motion perception, so I, his first graduate student, did likewise. First, using a rotating kymograph drum, a xerox of Bela Julesz' first random-dot patterns, and a stroboscope, I failed to discover D max. (Ol Braddick succeeded in discovering that later.) Then, using some fluorescent tubes driven by a home-made power pack, I failed to make a power stroboscope, but I stumbled across a ramp aftereffect, which I published in Science. Encouraged, but only faintly, by Richard, I discovered reversed phi by putting the wrong slides into a projector. Inspired by Richard's declaring that my PhD. thesis was 'surprisingly good', I went on to stumble across the footsteps illusion, the chopsticks illusion, four-stroke cycle motion, crossover motion, zigzag motion; and I have been stumbling on ever since. Richard has helped me to demonstrate that fortune favours the prepared mind (Pasteur) and also the unprepared mind (Anstis). Thank you, Richard. 10 Monday Talk session: Objects might underlie a rapid recruitment of medial temporal limbic brain areas by visual inputs. These data show that combining functional and structural MRI approaches can provide new insights on the neural architecture of the human face recognition system and help clarify how distributed face-responsive areas may work together. ◆ Behavioral and fMRI evidence for a prolonged development of face recognition in children