The University of Southampton
University of Southampton Institutional Repository

Induction of spatial anxiety in a virtual navigation environment

Induction of spatial anxiety in a virtual navigation environment
Induction of spatial anxiety in a virtual navigation environment
Spatial anxiety (i.e., feelings of apprehension and fear about navigating everyday environments) can adversely impact people’s ability to reach desired locations and explore unfamiliar places. Prior research has either assessed spatial anxiety as an individual-difference variable or measured it as an outcome, but there are currently no experimental inductions to investigate its causal effects. To address this lacuna, we developed a novel protocol for inducing spatial anxiety within a virtual environment. Participants first learnt a route using directional arrows. Next, we removed the directional arrows and randomly assigned participants to navigate either the same route (n = 22; control condition) or a variation of this route in which we surreptitiously introduced unfamiliar paths and landmarks (n = 22; spatial-anxiety condition). The manipulation successfully induced transient (i.e., state-level) spatial anxiety and task stress but did not significantly reduce task enjoyment. Our findings lay the foundation for an experimental paradigm that will facilitate future work on the causal effects of spatial anxiety in navigational contexts. The experimental task is freely available via the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/uq4v7/).
Navigation, Spatial anxiety, Spatial disorientation, Virtual environments
1554-351X
Oliver, Alice
18dffa2e-f895-4a54-8b40-4b1bc62cc09d
Wildschut, Tim
4452a61d-1649-4c4a-bb1d-154ec446ff81
Parker, Matthew
a3dd2011-809c-41d2-8669-445a20e3e48b
Wood, Antony
74e8ed07-c804-4d24-a5f8-7f2388cd556a
Redhead, Edward
d2342759-2c77-45ef-ac0f-9f70aa5db0df
Oliver, Alice
18dffa2e-f895-4a54-8b40-4b1bc62cc09d
Wildschut, Tim
4452a61d-1649-4c4a-bb1d-154ec446ff81
Parker, Matthew
a3dd2011-809c-41d2-8669-445a20e3e48b
Wood, Antony
74e8ed07-c804-4d24-a5f8-7f2388cd556a
Redhead, Edward
d2342759-2c77-45ef-ac0f-9f70aa5db0df

Oliver, Alice, Wildschut, Tim, Parker, Matthew, Wood, Antony and Redhead, Edward (2022) Induction of spatial anxiety in a virtual navigation environment. Behavior Research Methods. (doi:10.3758/s13428-022-01979-1).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Spatial anxiety (i.e., feelings of apprehension and fear about navigating everyday environments) can adversely impact people’s ability to reach desired locations and explore unfamiliar places. Prior research has either assessed spatial anxiety as an individual-difference variable or measured it as an outcome, but there are currently no experimental inductions to investigate its causal effects. To address this lacuna, we developed a novel protocol for inducing spatial anxiety within a virtual environment. Participants first learnt a route using directional arrows. Next, we removed the directional arrows and randomly assigned participants to navigate either the same route (n = 22; control condition) or a variation of this route in which we surreptitiously introduced unfamiliar paths and landmarks (n = 22; spatial-anxiety condition). The manipulation successfully induced transient (i.e., state-level) spatial anxiety and task stress but did not significantly reduce task enjoyment. Our findings lay the foundation for an experimental paradigm that will facilitate future work on the causal effects of spatial anxiety in navigational contexts. The experimental task is freely available via the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/uq4v7/).

Text
Oliver_et_al-2022-Behavior_Research_Methods - Version of Record
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution.
Download (1MB)

More information

Accepted/In Press date: 13 September 2022
e-pub ahead of print date: 12 October 2022
Published date: 12 October 2022
Additional Information: Funding Information: We are grateful to Pete Dargie for his assistance in the experimental setup, and to Dr. Matthew Jones for designing the virtual environment used in this study. This work and the corresponding author, AO is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council South Coast Doctoral Training Partnership (Grant Number: ES/P000673/1). We have no known conflict of interest to declare. Publisher Copyright: © 2022, The Author(s).
Related URLs:
Keywords: Navigation, Spatial anxiety, Spatial disorientation, Virtual environments

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 471569
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/471569
ISSN: 1554-351X
PURE UUID: 5cbab5aa-0167-4803-9cf9-6840b7bafaba
ORCID for Alice Oliver: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-8812-315X
ORCID for Tim Wildschut: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-6499-5487
ORCID for Antony Wood: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-1257-1877
ORCID for Edward Redhead: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-7771-1228

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 11 Nov 2022 17:42
Last modified: 26 Jun 2024 01:58

Export record

Altmetrics

Contributors

Author: Alice Oliver ORCID iD
Author: Tim Wildschut ORCID iD
Author: Matthew Parker
Author: Antony Wood ORCID iD
Author: Edward Redhead ORCID iD

Download statistics

Downloads from ePrints over the past year. Other digital versions may also be available to download e.g. from the publisher's website.

View more statistics

Atom RSS 1.0 RSS 2.0

Contact ePrints Soton: eprints@soton.ac.uk

ePrints Soton supports OAI 2.0 with a base URL of http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/cgi/oai2

This repository has been built using EPrints software, developed at the University of Southampton, but available to everyone to use.

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue without changing your settings, we will assume that you are happy to receive cookies on the University of Southampton website.

×