Active and passive spatial learning from a desk-top virtual environment in male and female participants: a comparison with guessing controls

Undergraduate students were asked to explore a
single room virtual environment (VE) containing 6
objects at floor level, depicted on a desk-top
monitor. Exploration was either active (using
keyboard keys to control displacements) or passive
(observing an active participant), with male-male
or female-female active-passive pairings. Following
exploration, all participants were asked to
independently complete a map task, requiring
them to indicate the positions of 5 of the floor
objects using a map which showed the one
remaining (reference) object. Guessing controls
performed the same task but without experience of
the room or VE. No gender differences were
obtained. Both active and passive exploration
groups were more accurate than guessing controls,
and no significant difference was obtained between
the two exploration groups. The results are in
agreement with several previous studies, which
found no active-passive differences in VEs. This
finding contrasts with real world exploration,
where active-passive differences are invariably
found. This difference might be explained if VE
learning is more explicit than real-world learning,
or if a VE imposes greater working memory load.