What is the Difference Between Active and Passive Spatial Navigation? Chrastil, Elizabeth R creator 2012 xvi, 223 p. born digital Thesis (Ph.D. -- Brown University (2012) Warren, William Director Burwell, Rebecca Reader Badre, David Reader Tarr, Michael Reader Brown University. Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences: Cognitive Sciences sponsor theses It seems intuitively obvious that active exploration of a new environment would lead to better spatial learning than passive exposure. However, the literature on this issue is decidedly mixed, in part because the concept itself is not well defined. This dissertation identifies and tests the contributions of five components to spatial learning: visual information, vestibular information, motor/proprioceptive information, cognitive decision-making, and the allocation of attention. Participants learned the locations of eight objects in an ambulatory virtual maze environment, and were then tested on their graph or survey knowledge of the environment. During learning, participants explored the maze by (1) walking, (2) being pushed in a wheelchair, or (3) sitting watching a video, and either (1) made decisions about exploration or (2) were guided through the maze. In Experiment 1, survey knowledge was tested with a direct shortcut task in a desert environment, walking in a straight line from object A to object B. In Experiment 2, graph knowledge was tested with a shortest route task, walking from A to B in the maze hallways, with detours. In Experiment 3, attention during learning was manipulated with an orienting task, by providing instructions and practice to orient attention to either the survey or the graph structure of the environment. The results suggest that (a) idiothetic information in walking contributes to metric survey knowledge, (b) decision-making during exploration contributes to graph knowledge, and (c) orienting tasks that direct attention to relevant environmental properties do not contribute to graph knowledge beyond the contributions of decision-making. The effects of decision-making in the graph test were most prominent with full idiothetic information, which may explain previous mixed results in desktop VR. In addition, large sex differences and individual differences were observed, which may reflect another component of active spatial learning: mental manipulation of spatial information. Thus, there is indeed an active advantage in spatial learning, however, different components of active learning contribute differently to graph and survey knowledge. Spatial cognition NavigationPerceptionVirtual reality RPB 20121023 engEnglish10.7301/Z0DJ5CXVIn CopyrightCollection is open for research.dissertations