Bilkent University, Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture, Department of Interior Architecture and Environmental Design, Bilkent, Ankara, 06800, Turkey.
Appl Ergon. 2022 Apr;100:103672. doi: 10.1016/j.apergo.2021.103672. Epub 2021 Dec 28.
This study examines the impact of the sound environment on spatial knowledge acquisition in a virtual outpatient polyclinic. Outpatient polyclinics have a salient role in determining early outpatient treatments of COVID-19 to prevent hospitalization or death and reduce the burden on hospitals. However, they have not been widely investigated in the literature. The studies on spatial knowledge have identified environmental elements mainly related to vision with no focus on sound. Currently, there is limited research on the effect of sound environment on spatial knowledge acquisition in virtual outpatient polyclinics. In this study, a virtual simulated outpatient polyclinic has been created with varying levels of visual and audio cues. Eighty participants were assigned to one of the four groups: a control (no visual signage), a visual (visual signage), an only audio (no landmarks and no visual signage), and an audio-visual group. The virtual environment was presented as a video walkthrough with passive exploration to test spatial knowledge acquisition with tasks based on the landmark-route-survey model. The results showed that a combination of visual signage and sound environment resulted in higher spatial knowledge acquisition. No significant difference was found between the performance of the visual group and the control group that shows that signage alone cannot aid spatial knowledge in virtual outpatient polyclinics. Data from the only audio group suggests that landmarks associated with sound can compensate for the lack of visual landmarks that may help design a wayfinding system for users with visual disabilities.
本研究考察了声音环境对虚拟门诊环境中空间知识获取的影响。门诊在确定 COVID-19 的早期门诊治疗以预防住院或死亡以及减轻医院负担方面发挥着重要作用。然而，它们在文献中尚未得到广泛研究。关于空间知识的研究已经确定了与视觉主要相关的环境要素，而没有关注声音。目前，关于声音环境对虚拟门诊环境中空间知识获取的影响的研究有限。在这项研究中，创建了一个具有不同视觉和音频提示水平的虚拟模拟门诊。80 名参与者被分配到以下四个组之一：对照组（无视觉标志）、视觉组（视觉标志）、仅音频组（无地标和无视觉标志）和视听组。虚拟环境以视频漫游的形式呈现，进行被动探索，根据地标-路线-调查模型进行空间知识获取测试。结果表明，视觉标志和声音环境的结合导致更高的空间知识获取。视觉组和对照组的表现没有显著差异，这表明仅标志本身并不能帮助虚拟门诊中的空间知识。来自仅音频组的数据表明，与声音相关的地标可以弥补视觉地标缺失的不足，这可能有助于为有视觉障碍的用户设计寻路系统。
