Development and verification of a VR platform to evaluate wayfinding abilities.
This study proposes a VR-based tool, named "Virtual City," to evaluate wayfinding abilities that are reported to decline with some cognition dysfunctions, such as dementia. This platform was designed according to cognition theories and took advantage of convenience of real-time recording by using VR techniques to make the evaluations less subjective and more accurate. Our previous study has shown the feasibility of using VR techniques to evaluate the sense of direction; we further use this newly developed tool to assess the effect of "screen type" and "reference landmark" on wayfinding performances. Experimental results show that subjects perform better with true-size 3D visual displays and reference landmarks, suggesting the factors that need to be considered for clinical application by using VR tools to detect cognition impairment in wayfinding.
Jiang
Ching-Fen
CF
Department of Biomedical Engineering, I-Shou University, Taiwan. cfjiang@isu.edu.tw
Li
Yeuan-Shyi
YS
D000328:Adult; D002947:Cities; D003071:Cognition; D003196:Computer Graphics; D003198:Computer Simulation; D003201:Computers; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009949:Orientation; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology; D012984:Software; D013028:Space Perception; D013624:Taiwan; D014584:User-Computer Interface; D014796:Visual Perception