Virtual navigation tested on a mobile app is predictive of real-world wayfinding navigation performance

Coutrot, Antoine, Schmidt, Sophie, Coutrot, Lena, Pittman, Jessica, Hong, Lynn, Wiener, Jan M., Hölscher, Christoph, Dalton, Ruth C., Hornberger, Michael ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2214-3788 and Spiers, Hugo J. (2019) Virtual navigation tested on a mobile app is predictive of real-world wayfinding navigation performance. PLoS One, 14 (3). ISSN 1932-6203

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Abstract

Virtual reality environments presented on tablets and smartphones have potential to aid the early diagnosis of conditions such as Alzheimer’s dementia by quantifying impairments in navigation performance. However, it is unclear whether performance on mobile devices can predict navigation errors in the real world. We compared the performance of 49 participants (25 females, 18-35 years old) at wayfinding and path integration tasks designed in our mobile app ‘Sea Hero Quest’ with their performance at similar tasks in a real-world environment. We first performed this experiment in the streets of London (UK) and replicated it in Paris (France). In both cities, we found a significant correlation between virtual and real-world wayfinding performance and a male advantage in both environments, although smaller in the real world (Cohen’s d in the game = 0.89, in the real world = 0.59). Results in London and Paris were highly similar, and controlling for familiarity with video games did not change the results. The strength of the correlation between real world and virtual environment increased with the difficulty of the virtual wayfinding task, indicating that Sea Hero Quest does not merely capture video gaming skills. The fact that the Sea Hero Quest wayfinding task has real-world ecological validity constitutes a step toward controllable, sensitive, safe, low-cost, and easy to administer digital cognitive assessment of navigation ability.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: biochemistry, genetics and molecular biology(all),agricultural and biological sciences(all) ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/1300
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > Norwich Medical School
UEA Research Groups: Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > Research Groups > Mental Health
Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > Research Centres > Lifespan Health
Related URLs:
Depositing User: LivePure Connector
Date Deposited: 29 Mar 2019 11:30
Last Modified: 19 Oct 2023 02:24
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/70376
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0213272

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