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Treasure Hunting in Virtual Environments: Scaling Laws of Human Motions and Mathematical Models of Human Actions in Uncertainty

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Nonlinear Dynamics and Complexity

Part of the book series: Nonlinear Systems and Complexity ((NSCH,volume 8))

Abstract

Searching experiments conducted in different virtual environments over a gender balanced group of people revealed a gender irrelevant scale-free spread of searching activity on large spatiotemporal scales. The better performance of men in virtual environments can be associated with the regularly renewed computer game experience, essentially in games played through a first-person perspective. We suggested a simple self-organized critical model of search, in which the experimentally observed scale-free behavior can be interpreted as a trade-off between the value of exploitation versus exploration amid uncertainty.

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Acknowledgments

The treasure hunting experiments have been supported by the Cognitive Interaction Technology—Center of Excellence (CITEC, Bielefeld University).

D.V. gratefully acknowledges the financial support by the project MatheMACS (“Mathematics of Multilevel Anticipatory Complex Systems”), grant agreement no. 318723, funded by the EC Seventh Framework Programme FP7-ICT-2011-8.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Physics, Bielefeld University, Universitaetsstr. 25, 33615, Bielefeld, Germany

    Dimitri Volchenkov

  2. Technical Faculty, Bielefeld University, Universitaetsstr. 25, 33615, Bielefeld, Germany

    Jonathan Helbach & Marko Tscherepanow

  3. Physiological Psychology, Bielefeld University, 100131, 33501, Bielefeld, Germany

    Sina Kühnel

Authors
  1. Dimitri Volchenkov
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  2. Jonathan Helbach
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  3. Marko Tscherepanow
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  4. Sina Kühnel
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sina Kühnel .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. San Luis Potosi University, San Luis Potosi, Mexico

    Valentin Afraimovich

  2. School of Engineering Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, Edwardsville, Illinois, USA

    Albert C. J. Luo

  3. Shandong Normal University, Ji’nan, People's Republic of China

    Xilin Fu

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Volchenkov, D., Helbach, J., Tscherepanow, M., Kühnel, S. (2014). Treasure Hunting in Virtual Environments: Scaling Laws of Human Motions and Mathematical Models of Human Actions in Uncertainty. In: Afraimovich, V., Luo, A., Fu, X. (eds) Nonlinear Dynamics and Complexity. Nonlinear Systems and Complexity, vol 8. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02353-3_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02353-3_8

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-02352-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-02353-3

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