Active Versus Passive Acquisition of Spatial Knowledge While Controlling a Vehicle in a Virtual Urban Space in Drivers and Non-Drivers

Historically, real-world studies have indicated a spatial learningadvantage for people who actively explore the environment they inhabit as opposed tothose whose experience is more passive. A common contrast is made between the spatiallearning of car drivers and passengers. However, compared with walking and other formsof transportation, car-driving experience per se has a special status. An experiment wasconducted to explore the dual hypotheses that active explorers learn more about thelayout of a virtual environment (VE) than passive observers and that real-world cardrivers will learn more regardless of their experimental active/passive status.Participants explored a virtual model of a small town in active/passive, pairs. Activeexploration was self-directed and goal driven, and all learning tasks were explicit.Consistent with many earlier studies in VEs, there was no benefit from activity(controlling exploration/movement), arguably because input control competes with spatialinformation acquisition. When participants were divided according to whether they werelicensed drivers or not, the results showed that drivers were significantly moreaccurate than non-drivers at indicating the positions of target locations on a map, inboth the active and passive conditions. An interaction showed that in the activecondition, drivers had significantly better route scores than non-drivers, and betterthan drivers in the passive condition. Driving may therefore be beneficial for spatialabilities over and above the general benefits of “activity” and when spatial skills areexamined in VEs, driver experience is an important criterion that should be taken intoaccount