Jansen-Osmann Petra, Heil Martin
Department of Experimental Psychology, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, Germany.
Adv Cogn Psychol. 2008 Jul 15;3(3):389-97. doi: 10.2478/v10053-008-0003-6.
This study investigated the effect of the environmental structure (circular vs. square environment) on spatial knowledge acquisition in a desktop virtual situation in which self-determined movement was allowed with a total of 120 participants: 7-, 8-year-old children; 11, 12-year-old children, and adults. In all measurements of spatial knowledge acquisition an overall developmental performance increase from younger children to adults was found. In contrast to that, the exploration and learning behavior did not differ between adults and children. Furthermore, the environmental structure influencedthenumber of trials needed to learn the two routes used and the distance walked to the determined landmarks. All these tasks were easier in a circular than in a square environment. This influenceofthe environmental structure was absent in the direction estimations task. The advantage of spatial knowledge acquisition in a circular environment in three of four tasks is discussed.
本研究调查了环境结构（圆形环境与方形环境）对桌面虚拟情境中空间知识获取的影响。在该情境中，120名参与者（7岁、8岁儿童；11岁、12岁儿童以及成年人）被允许自主移动。在所有空间知识获取的测量中，发现从年幼儿童到成年人，整体发展表现呈上升趋势。与此相反，成年人与儿童之间的探索和学习行为并无差异。此外，环境结构影响了学习两条路线所需的试验次数以及走到指定地标的步行距离。在所有这些任务中，圆形环境比方形环境更容易完成。在方向估计任务中，环境结构的这种影响并不存在。本文讨论了在四项任务中的三项任务里，圆形环境在空间知识获取方面的优势。
