Illustration of SHQ. (a) Wayfinding level 6, where locations of three numbered checkpoints are first shown on a map. After the map disappears, participants have to navigate the boat to the numbered checkpoints in order, (b) Flare level 9, where participants navigate the boat from a starting location along the river, until they find a flare gun. Once found, the boat rotates by 180° clockwise and the participants are asked to shoot the gun in the direction of the starting location.
Vaisakh Puthusseryppady, a post-doctoral scholar at the University of California, Irvine in the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior writes: “As far as we are aware, this is the first study to relate patient navigation performance in VR environments to their risk for spatial disorientation in the community. An important direction for future studies would be to explore and identify VR navigation tests and measures that are effective in predicting patients’ risk for spatial disorientation in the community.”
