Dyadic Acquisition of Survey Knowledge in a Shared Virtual Environment

Navigation and wayfinding are often accomplished collectively, with groups of people. Yet most studies of navigation and wayfinding behavior, and of the acquisition of spatial knowledge more generally, focus on the individual. In this paper we extend the investigation of these topics to dyads. In particular, we focus on how well straight-line distances and directions between objects (survey knowledge) were learned by individuals and by the same individuals when comprising a dyad. Our experiment was carried out in a shared virtual environment and we report on the technical issues in conducting such a collaborative experiment in a shared virtual environment, such as the choice of locomotion mode and the provision of full-body self-avatars. Our findings indicate that dyads outperform individuals in their acquisition of survey knowledge.