![]() This methodological challenge has been increasingly overcome in the last 20 years with the rise of virtual reality ( Bohil et al., 2011 Tarr & Warren, 2002). In order to achieve ecological and controllable experimental conditions, researchers faced the need to make the laboratory “life-like” ( Gibson, 1979). The study of human behavior in the real world has long faced a methodological limitation, mainly due to the heterogeneous place-specific complexity of a real environment, and the lack of control on it ( Kimura et al., 2017). Virtual reality as a means to explore human wayfinding in simultaneously controlled and realistic environments However, very few studies have reported testing navigational aids using landmark representations. (2007) advocated the use of landmark representations in navigational aids, as they have proven crucial to effective wayfinding, allowing people to avoid mistakes and hesitations. Indeed, while it is documented that the use of “landmark” spatial information eases wayfinding ( Denis, 1997 Denis et al., 2007, 2014), most current navigational aids rely solely on complex “survey” aerial information, and might therefore not be optimal ( Grison & Gyselinck, 2019). However, as Grison and Gyselinck (2019) highlight, few of these solutions, if any, rely on the body of work of cognitive science on wayfinding. Various navigational aids have been developed over the last 40 years in order to assist people in finding their way towards a destination, whether they drive a vehicle or walk ( Grison & Gyselinck, 2019). Wayfinding is considered a complex, multifactorial and cognitively costly task. In particular, wayfinding relies heavily on internal spatial representations, or “mental models”, from a “landmark”, first-person perspective to a “survey”, bird’s eye-view of the environment ( Johnson-Laird, 1980 Siegel & White, 1975 Tolman, 1948). This spatial problem-solving involves not only visual perception, but also executive and mnesic functions, in order to retain spatial information and perform the adequate actions that will lead an individual from an origin to their desired destination ( Meneghetti et al., 2017 Vandenberg, 2016). While locomotion designates bodily movements and muscular coordination in the immediate surroundings of an individual, moving towards a distant location involves the set of cognitive processes referred to as “wayfinding”, defined as the construct and the use of internal spatial representations to find and follow a path linking two places ( Golledge, 1992 Montello, 2005, 2017 Wiener et al., 2009). This activity is sustained by two key components: Locomotion and “wayfinding” ( Montello, 2005). This is the fundamental first step in most people’s daily activities. Spatial navigation within an environment consists in starting from a location to reach a destination either indoors or outdoors. Recommendations towards the use of video game-based methodologies for future research are discussed. Our results provide evidence that this video game offers a transparent and adaptable way to investigate cognitive processes with high experimental control and psychological validity. This study assessed a prototype of landmark-based navigational aid by administering wayfinding tasks in the video game Grand Theft Auto V. Our argument is that widely available video games could represent a worthwhile alternative to laboratory-made virtual environments, while providing a satisfactory methodological quality. Moreover, the variety of the settings results in standardization issues across studies. Yet, the difficulty in developing life-like virtual settings still remains a substantial barrier to most studies when fidelity to the real world has to be achieved in order to ensure some psychological validity of the results. The rise of virtual reality has overcome many of the methodological challenges faced by researchers studying spatial navigation. ![]()
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