2021 Volume 77 Issue 1 Pages 75-87
Humans navigate urban spaces by relying on two different types of spatial memory, namely route maps and survey maps. Conventional experiments that reveal human behavioral characteristics in urban spaces are not only costly in terms of the personnel required for measurement and analysis of large amounts of data but also lack reproducibility of the actual experimental environment. To solve these problems, we propose a system to construct an urban space in virtual reality (VR) using physical movements and exploration. However, it is not clear what type of cognitive maps are formed in the human brain when exploring urban spaces using survey maps. Therefore, the primary purpose of this study is to quantitatively evaluate the cognitive map formed in VR space using geometrical and statistical properties. Experiments were conducted in both spaces, and the geometrical properties of distortion of the cognitive map did not show any specific tendencies for deviation from the real survey map, whereas the statistical properties showed high correlations with the real map. These results indicate that there are no differences in the cognitive maps formed by experiments conducted in two different spaces.
