Meaningfulness of landmark pictograms reduces visual salience and recognition performance

Interpretation of Map Symbols in the Context of Gamers’ Age and Experience

In this article researchers examined the differences that may characterise selected groups of gamers with regard to age and time spent on playing a survival game, Valheim, confronted with their interpretation of map symbols used in the game. The Valheim video game, which was released in early 2021, is a survival game set in a gameplay world inspired by Norse mythology. The authors of the article noted that the age factor and gaming experience may have different results in terms of the interpretation of cartographic products. The obtained data came from an online questionnaire. In the statistical analysis the authors employed the Pearson’s chi-squared test and the Benjamini–Hochberg procedure to find statistically significant differences between selected groups of respondents and their subjective interpretation of map symbols. Statistical analysis showed several differences and interesting relationships in the interpretation of symbols in relation to the age of the players and in the interpretation of symbols in relation to the time spent in the game. For future research, it is worth continuing towards researching new video games with existing cartographic products in order to investigate how games and players influence the culture in which they participate.

Improvement of Apraxia With Augmented Reality: Influencing Pantomime of Tool Use via Holographic Cues

Background: Defective pantomime of tool use is a hall mark of limb apraxia. Contextual information has been demonstrated to improve tool use performance. Further, knowledge about the potential impact of technological aids such as augmented reality for patients with limb apraxia is still scarce. Objective: Since augmented reality offers a new way to provide contextual information, we applied it to pantomime of tool use. We hypothesize that the disturbed movement execution can be mitigated by holographic stimulation. If visual stimuli facilitate the access to the appropriate motor program in patients with apraxia, their performance should improve with increased saliency, i.e., should be better when supported by dynamic and holographic cues vs. static and screen-based cues. Methods: Twenty one stroke patients and 23 healthy control subjects were randomized to mime the use of five objects, presented in two Environments (Screen vs. Head Mounted Display, HMD) and two Modes (Static vs. Dynamic) resulting in four conditions (ScreenStat, ScreenDyn, HMDStat, HMDDyn), followed by a real tool demonstration. Pantomiming was analyzed by a scoring system using video recordings. Additionally, the sense of presence was assessed using a questionnaire. Results: Healthy control participants performed close to ceiling and significantly better than patients. Patients achieved significantly higher scores with holographic or dynamic cues. Remarkably, when their performance was supported by animated holographic cues (e.g., striking hammer), it did not differ significantly from real tool demonstration. As the sense of presence increases with animated holograms, so does the pantomiming. Conclusion: Patients' performance improved with visual stimuli of increasing saliency. Future assistive technology could be implemented upon this knowledge and thus, positively impact the rehabilitation process and a patient's autonomy.

Effects of visual map complexity on the attentional processing of landmarks

In the era of smartphones, route-planning and navigation is supported by freely and globally available web mapping services, such as OpenStreetMap or Google Maps. These services provide digital maps, as well as route planning functions that visually highlight the suggested route in the map. Additionally, such digital maps contain landmark pictograms, i.e. representations of salient objects in the environment. These landmark representations are, amongst other reference points, relevant for orientation, route memory, and the formation of a cognitive map of the environment. The amount of visible landmarks in maps used for navigation and route planning depends on the width of the displayed margin areas around the route. The amount of further reference points is based on the visual complexity of the map. This raises the question how factors like the distance of landmark representations to the route and visual map complexity determine the relevance of specific landmarks for memorizing a route. In order to answer this question, two experiments that investigated the relation between eye fixation patterns on landmark representations, landmark positions, route memory and visual map complexity were carried out. The results indicate that the attentional processing of landmark representations gradually decreases with an increasing distance to the route, decision points and potential decision points. Furthermore, this relation was found to be affected by the visual complexity of the map. In maps with low visual complexity, landmark representations further away from the route are fixated. However, route memory was not found to be affected by visual complexity of the map. We argue that map users might require a certain amount of reference points to form spatial relations as a foundation for a mental representation of space. As maps with low visual complexity offer less reference points, people need to scan a wider area. Therefore, visual complexity of the area displayed in a map should be considered in navigation-oriented map design by increasing displayed margins around the route in maps with a low visual complexity. In order to verify our assumption that the amount of reference points not only affects visual attention processes, but also the formation of a mental representation of space, additional research is required.

Landmark Generation in Visual Place Recognition Using Multi-Scale Sliding Window for Robotics

Landmark generation is an essential component in landmark-based visual place recognition. In this paper, we present a simple yet effective method, called multi-scale sliding window (MSW), for landmark generation in order to improve the performance of place recognition. In our method, we generate landmarks that form a uniform distribution in multiple landmark scales (sizes) within an appropriate range by a process that samples an image with a sliding window. This is in contrast to conventional methods of landmark generation that typically depend on detecting objects whose size distributions are uneven and, as a result, may not be effective in achieving shift invariance and viewpoint invariance, two important properties in visual place recognition. We conducted experiments on four challenging datasets to demonstrate that the recognition performance can be significantly improved by our method in a standard landmark-based visual place recognition system. Our method is simple with a single input parameter, the scales of landmarks required, and it is efficient as it does not involve detecting objects.

Reduction of Map Information Regulates Visual Attention without Affecting Route Recognition Performance

Map-based navigation is a diverse task that stands in contradiction to the goal of completeness of web mapping services. As each navigation task is different, it also requires and can dispense with different map information to support effective and efficient wayfinding. Task-oriented reduction of the elements displayed in a map may therefore support navigation. In order to investigate effects of map reduction on route recognition and visual attention towards specific map elements, we created maps in which areas offside an inserted route were displayed as transparent. In a route memory experiment, where participants had to memorize routes and match them to routes displayed in following stimuli, these maps were compared to unmodified maps. Eye movement analyses revealed that in the reduced maps, areas offside the route were fixated less often. Route recognition performance was not affected by the map reduction. Our results indicate that task-oriented map reduction may direct visual attention towards relevant map elements at no cost for route recognition.