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Distance cognition in virtual environmental space: Further investigations to clarify the route-angularity effect

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Abstract

Two experiments with 72 participants in total investigated the route-angularity effect. This effect is shown when a greater number of turns along a route increase the estimated length of this route. In this study it was shown that the route-angularity effect is likely to be a memory-based effect depending on task difficulty. The important factor seems to be how heavily memory is loaded during learning. The route-angularity effect even appears in intentional learning, when memory is loaded heavily. Under this learning condition participants know beforehand that they have to estimate distances. All experiments were conducted in a controlled virtual environment, which allows a reliable investigation of distance estimations in environmental space.

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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Martin Brandt, Susanne Mayr, Juliane Schmid, and Stefanie Richter for comments and discussions. Furthermore, we thank the students of the practical course for executing Experiment 2.

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  1. Institute of Experimental Psychology, Heinrich-Heine-University, Universitätsstrasse 1, 40225, Düsseldorf, Germany

    Petra Jansen-Osmann & Gunnar Wiedenbauer

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  1. Petra Jansen-Osmann
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  2. Gunnar Wiedenbauer
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Correspondence to Petra Jansen-Osmann.

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Jansen-Osmann, P., Wiedenbauer, G. Distance cognition in virtual environmental space: Further investigations to clarify the route-angularity effect. Psychological Research 70, 43–51 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-004-0183-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-004-0183-8

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