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Gender differences in spatial awareness in immersive virtual environments: a preliminary investigation

Paraskeva, Christos; Koulieris, George Alex; Coxon, Matthew; Mania, Katerina

Gender differences in spatial awareness in immersive virtual environments: a preliminary investigation Thumbnail


Authors

Christos Paraskeva

Matthew Coxon

Katerina Mania



Abstract

This paper presents an experiment exploring gender differences in spatial navigation, memory performance and spatial awareness through a complex Virtual Environment (VE). The immersive simulation consisted of a radiosity-rendered space divided in four zones including a kitchen area, a dining area, an office area and a lounge area. The space was populated with objects consistent as well as inconsistent with each zone's context. The simulation was then displayed on a stereo head tracked Head Mounted Display. Participants were separated in two groups based on their gender. After being exposed to the VE, they completed an object-based memory recognition task. Participants also reported one of two states of awareness following each recognition response which reflected either the recollection of contextual detail or informed guesses. It was found that reported awareness states interacted with the context consistency of the objects: participants recollected more contextual detail when correctly identifying inconsistent objects compared to consistent objects. Furthermore, a clear gender difference was found with female participants correctly identifying objects in their correct location more often than the male participants.

Citation

Paraskeva, C., Koulieris, G. A., Coxon, M., & Mania, K. (2012). Gender differences in spatial awareness in immersive virtual environments: a preliminary investigation. In Proceedings of the 11th ACM SIGGRAPH International Conference on Virtual-Reality Continuum and its Applications in Industry - VRCAI '12 : Nanyang Technical University, Singapore, December 02-04, 2012 (95-98). https://doi.org/10.1145/2407516.2407546

Conference Name Proceedings of the 11th ACM SIGGRAPH International Conference on Virtual-Reality Continuum and its Applications in Industry ACM
Conference Location Singapore
Start Date Dec 2, 2012
End Date Dec 4, 2012
Acceptance Date Oct 15, 2012
Online Publication Date Dec 2, 2012
Publication Date Dec 2, 2012
Deposit Date Jun 5, 2018
Publicly Available Date Mar 29, 2024
Publisher Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Pages 95-98
Book Title Proceedings of the 11th ACM SIGGRAPH International Conference on Virtual-Reality Continuum and its Applications in Industry - VRCAI '12 : Nanyang Technical University, Singapore, December 02-04, 2012.
DOI https://doi.org/10.1145/2407516.2407546

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Copyright Statement
© by the Association for Computing Machinery, Inc. 2012. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive Version of Record was published in Proceedings of the 11th ACM SIGGRAPH International Conference on Virtual-Reality Continuum and its Applications in Industry - VRCAI '12, https://doi.org/10.1145/2407516.2407546.





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