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Experimental Research in Urban Spatial Cognition by Using Virtual Reality Technology

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Experimental Research in Urban Spatial Cognition by Using Virtual Reality Technology Athens Journal of Technology Engineering March 2014 Experimental Research in Urban Spatial Cognition by Using Virtual Reality Technology By Sinan Yuan Shuang Song† Yukun Zhang ‡ This paper presents a VR experiment investigating how people construct the cognitive map in mind, generate spatial memory and respond when exploring the urban environment. 76 participants were recruited to explore the virtual town of Xidi. By analyzing the traces of the participants and the data of subjective feedbacks, the research examines how the space affects people generating spatial memory and producing the corresponding behavior pattern during the exploration. Furthermore, the interaction mechanism between the urban evolution and human behavior is investigated by comparing the participants’ behavior trajectory and the real town spatial structure. Results from this research shed light on the future use of VR technology as an efficient tool in cognitive urban research.1 Introduction The development of three-dimensional (3-D) computer graphics and related technology in recent years has led to a blurring of the distinction between reality and virtual environment. This suggests the validity of virtual reality (VR) technology as a tool for urban research. VR technology, directly associated with the human sensory organs, provides urban researchers new opportunities to investigate spatial cognition, memory and behavior in urban environment. It is advanced compared with animation cognition in the sense of providing the interactivity between people and environment. It involves the subjective judgment in spatial experience and simulates the entire process of cognition in real world. By using VR technology, it is possible to examine enormous objects such as urban space experimentally and study complicated phenomena analytically. Moreover, VR experiment makes it possible to study urban space among a wider population in comparison with conventional Lecturer, Tianjin University, China. †Architect, CCDI GROUP, China. ‡ Professor, Tianjin University, China. 1The paper is funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China with the Foundation No: nsfc.51208346. 19 Vol. 1, No. 1 Yuan et al: Experimental Research in Urban Spatial Cognition … methods. However, in the field of architecture VR technology is primarily used as a high performance media such as demonstration systems and aided design systems currently. Its application in the research of spatial cognition has seldom been explored. This paper aims to expand the application of VR technology in urban science as an efficient tool in cognitive research. The paper presents a VR experimental method to investigate how urban morphological features affect people’s spatial cognition and how people construct the cognitive map in mind, generate spatial memory and respond when exploring the urban environment. The method was applied in Xidi, a typical Chinese settlement. The experiment addresses the following questions: 1. how do people define the morphological characteristics of Xidi? 2. Whether and how does the space influence participants to produce corresponding behavior patterns during the exploration? 3. What factors are related to participants’ choices at street junctions? 4. What factors do people depend on to construct spatial memory and cognitive map? Spatial Cognition According to Bill Hillier(2005, p100), ‘space is not a background to human activity, but an intrinsic aspect of everything human beings do in the sense that moving through space, interacting with other people in space, or even just seeing ambient space from a point in it.’ All these behaviors are produced based on spatial cognition. People’s spatial cognition of street network is made up of an integration of cognitive memory fragments and the translation between them during the space exploration. It is an information processing procedure of the size, shape, orientation and distance of three-dimensional objects in physical space. It is concerned with the acquisition, organization, utilization, and revision of knowledge about spatial environments. These capabilities enable humans to manage basic and high-level cognitive tasks in everyday life. The process of spatial cognition has three main phases: (1) obtaining the information of the surrounding environment; (2) capturing the morphological characteristics of space through various sensory organs; (3) storing the acquired information in brain, generating the understanding of the environment and constructing a cognitive map. The third phase plays the most important role in the whole cognition process. The term cognitive map was introduced by Tolman (1948), which later became the basis for cognitive psychology research. According to Kulpers (1983), the cognitive map is the body of knowledge of a large-scale environment which is acquired by integrating observations over time. It can be used to find routes and determine the relative position of places. Downs and Stea (2005, p314) offered cognitive mapping a formal definition as ‘a process composed of a series of psychological transformations by which an individual acquires, codes, stores, recalls and decodes information about the relative locations and attributes of phenomena in his everyday spatial environment.’ 20 Athens Journal of Technology Engineering March 2014 After 1950s, the research method of cognitive psychology was introduced in architecture and urban science. Lynch (1960) investigated spatial cognition through interviews, questionnaires and cognitive mapping. The investigation of people’s cognitive mechanism of urban space has contributed to improving the quality of urban space and creating people-oriented settlement environment. In recent years, some researchers have begun to apply new methods such as VR technology in the investigation of spatial cognition. Wiener et al. (2009) explored how the geometry of space controls visual attention during spatial decision making by using VR technology. Frankenstein et al. (2010) used VR simulation to demonstrate how geometry and objects influence local route choices during way finding. Methods We build up a VR experiment platform as a cognitive research device. By integrating quantitative morphological research methods, the research investigates the relationship between people’s behavior, cognition and environment. Space Syntax Space syntax, a popular quantitative research method of network analysis, was proposed by Bill Hiller et al. based on spatial cognition. The theory focuses on the topological structures of urban space. By analyzing the space configuration, it reveals intrinsic features of urban and architectural environment. Axial map and visibility graph analysis (VGA) are two primary tools of space syntax for the analysis and representation of urban spatial structure. They can be performed by the computer program Depthmap developed by UCL. ‘An axial map of the open space structure of the settlement is the least set of axial lines which pass through each convex space and make all axial links’ (Hillier &Hanson, 1984, p91-92).After translating an urban layout into an axial map, the map can be used to analyze the integration pattern of the street network. In an axial map, integration values of different streets are visualized by a color range (from red for the most integrated to blue for the least). The values also suggest the accessibility of topological lines for the entire street system. According to Penn (2003), an axial map represents the set of most efficient potential paths through an environment with respect to the accruing of maximum visual information about that context. It has been used successfully to investigate the effect of space structure on pedestrian movement (Hillier et al, 1987, 1993; Peponis et al, 1989). It is also effective in predicting navigational patterns (Penn, 2003). VGA is used to analyze the variety of the integration inside a visual field. A uniform grid of points is generated within the entire area to be analyzed. By calculating the visible field from each point to any others, the grid is colored up according to the integration values from red (high) to blue (low). The resulting 21 Vol. 1, No. 1 Yuan et al: Experimental Research in Urban Spatial Cognition … pattern of visual integration says more than how much you can see from each point. It also says how difficult it is to see all the space in the layout from each point. In the early days, VGA was used to analyze the inter-visibility connections within buildings and urban networks (e.g., Turner et al, 2001; Desyllas &Duxbury, 2001). Recent researches (Proceedings of the Seventh International Space Syntax Symposium, 2009) show that VGA has been primarily applied to investigate how the structure of urban space has an effect on spatial accessibility and centrality under the guidance of vision. VGA can also be used to analyze the land use characteristics and pedestrian movement under the influence of spatial cognition. VR Experiment Platform The proposed VR experiment platform is designed to construct characteristics of virtual urban environment for experience, trace the participants and perform the research of spatial cognition. A complete set of the platform is composed of a software system and a hardware system. The software system is used to simulate scenes of environment and achieve the real-time interactive behavior between people and environment. The hardware system outputs the information of scenes to participants for creating an immersive virtual environment and providing a man-computer interaction
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