The Effect of Child and Adult Avatars on Spatial Perception in Urban-Scale Virtual Environment

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Lee, Jeongmin; Chen, Yuetong; Gillies, Marco and Pan, Xueni. 2025. 'The Effect of Child and Adult Avatars on Spatial Perception in Urban-Scale Virtual Environment'. In: AIxVR: 7th IEEE International Conference on Artificial Intelligence & eXtended and Virtual Reality. Lisbon, Portugal 27-29 January 2025. [Conference or Workshop Item]

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Abstract or Description

Spatial perception varies significantly between large-scale environments and smaller, object- or room-scale settings. Individuals process and interpret space differently depending on its scale, using their own bodies as reference points. In order to study spatial cognition as it applies to urban environments, it is vital to study it at a suitable scale and in people navigating those environments. Virtual Reality (VR) provides a way to study our spatial cognition in realistic, large-scale urban environments that participants are able to navigate freely. This paper presents a methodology for studying spatial cognition of large-scale virtual urban environments, including three novel tasks that address spatial memory (memory of landmarks and navigation paths) and preferences for urban features (deleting or adding features). This study applies this methodology to investigate the differences in spatial perception, memory, and layout preferences between people embodied in child and adult avatars. This is an interesting problem, as it opens up the possibility of allowing adults to understand how children experience urban environments differently. Using Virtual Reality, participants experienced an urban-scale environment while embodied in either a child or an adult in a full-body avatar and then undertook our spatial memory and preference tasks. The study showed no difference in the memory tasks, though the participants in child avatars deleted more features. This suggests that there is no evidence that embodiment as a child affects spatial cognition but that it might allow participants to detect more problems with an environment.

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Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)

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Keywords:

Spatial cognition, spatial perception, spatial memory, body size, virtual avatar, embodiment

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