We used immersive virtual reality to develop a novel behavioral paradigm to examine navigation under dynamically changing, high-stress situations.
Visual Navigation Under High-Stress Conditions
There are known individual differences in both ability to learn the layout of novel environments and flexibility of strategies for navigating known environments. It is unclear, however, how navigational abilities and situational awareness are impacted by high-stress scenarios and whether augmented reality (AR) could be employed to enhance performance and situational awareness.
This project will investigate three core questions:
- How does a person’s navigational abilities change in extreme situations?
- How can we best train them for these situations?
- How can vision augmentation be employed to improve situational awareness?
Project Lead:
PhD Student
Project Affiliates:
Research Assistant
Research Assistant
Lab Volunteer
Principal Investigators:
Assistant Professor
Distinguished Professor
Distinguished Professor
Professor
UARC W911NF-19-D-0001 Task 21:
Visual navigation under high-stress conditions
PI: Michael Beyeler, Mary Hegarty, Scott Grafton, Barry Giesbrecht
October 2021 - September 2023
Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies (ICB)
Department of the Army
Publications
Stress affects navigation strategies in immersive virtual reality
Apurv Varshney, Mitchell Munns, Justin Kasowski, Mantong Zhou, Chuanxiuyue He, Scott Grafton, Barry Giesbrecht, Mary Hegarty, Michael Beyeler PsyArXiv
(Note: AV and MM contributed equally to this work.)
