RAPID COMMUNICATION Equivalence of Real-World and Virtual-Reality Route Learning: A Pilot Study Joanne Lloyd, Ph.D., 1 Nathan V. Persaud, M.Sc., 1 and Theresa E. Powell, Ph.D. 1,2 Abstract There is good evidence for effective transfer of learning from virtual to real-world environments, and this holds true even for complex spatial tasks such as route learning. However, there is little research into the simple equivalence of an individual’s performance across real and virtual environments, an important topic which could support the use of virtual reality as an assessment and research tool. This pilot study compared route- learning performance in a desktop virtual town with performance around a real-world route. Participants were ‘‘driven’’ around a route through a virtual town and around a different (but equally complex) route through a real-world suburb, then asked to direct the driver back around each of the routes from memory. They completed strategy checklists after learning each route. Results indicated good equivalence between the real and virtual environments, with comparable error rates and no differences in strategy preferences. This dem- onstrates that simple desktop virtual environments may be a useful tool for assessment of and research into route learning. Introduction W hile the value of virtual reality (VR) in risky sit- uations such as flight training 1 and surgical training 2 is well recognized, a less obvious field in which it has recently been embraced is that of wayfinding. It has been found, for example, that spatial information learned in a simulated en- vironment can be transferred to the real world; this has practical implications for scenarios such as military training, where soldiers can familiarize themselves with territory vir- tually to improve their navigation efficiency in subsequent real-world maneuvers. 3 In psychological research, VR can be used to generate completely novel, controlled, and consistent environments, where participants’ wayfinding can be studied without prior familiarity with a location confounding results. It also circumvents mobility impairment and physical fatigue (particularly when studying walked routes), and because of ‘‘time compression,’’ 3 it can allow more to be achieved within a given time period. Good evidence for the ecological validity of virtual way- finding comes from studies showing transfer of learning from real to virtual environments. Researchers have demonstrated transfer of knowledge about the layout of a school building from a desktop virtual simulation to the real-world building itself in children with mobility impairments 4–6 and have even observed generalized improvement on nontrained tasks. 4,5 In an outdoor orienteering task, Darken and Banker 3 found that for some participants (i.e., ‘‘intermediate’’ standard naviga- tors), preexposure to a real-world environment in the form of a virtual simulation resulted in better performance than pre- exposure to a map or even to the real world itself; and Farrell et al. 7 demonstrated transfer of spatial knowledge from a virtual building to its real-world counterpart. Other studies demonstrate the equivalence of wayfinding across real and virtual environments. Ruddle et al. 8 highlight similar patterns of biases when people learn layouts of real and virtual buildings. In a virtual office, they found learn- ing by navigation to promote most accurate estimations of ‘‘path’’ distances, while learning from a map resulted in su- perior estimates of ‘‘as-the-crow-flies’’ distances, consistent with biases seen in a similar real-world task. 9 Studies of participants with acquired brain injury (ABI) also support the equivalence of real and virtual wayfinding, showing real- world spatial learning deficits to be mirrored in both sim- plistic 10 and complex 11 virtual environments. A relatively neglected question, however, concerns whe- ther individuals’ route-learning performance as measured in a virtual task is equivalent to their real-world performance. If 1 School of Psychology, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham, United Kingdom. 2 Moor Green, South Birmingham PCT, Moseley Hall Hospital, Moseley, Birmingham, United Kingdom. CYBERPSYCHOLOGY &BEHAVIOR Volume 12, Number 4, 2009 ª Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. DOI: 10.1089=cpb.2008.0326 423