The influence of action on episodic memory: A virtual reality study

A range of empirical findings suggest that active learning is important for memory. However, few studies have focused on the mechanisms underlying this enactment effect in episodic memory using complex environments. Research using virtual reality has yielded inconsistent results. We postulated that the effect of action depends on the degree of interaction with the environment and freedom in the planning of an itinerary. To test these hypotheses, we disentangled the interaction and planning components of action to investigate whether each enhances factual and spatial memory. Seventy-two participants (36 male and 36 female) explored a virtual town in one of three experimental conditions: (a) a passive condition where participants were immersed as passenger of the car (no interaction, no planning); (b) a planning-only condition (the subject chose the itinerary but did not drive the car); (c) an interaction-only condition (the subject drove the car but the itinerary was fixed). We found that itinerary choice and motor control both enhanced spatial memory, while factual memory was impaired by online motor control. The role of action in memory is discussed.     

Prospective memory training in young adults enhances trained-task but not transfer-task performance

ABSTRACT

Training and transfer effects of prospective memory training have not been assessed in healthy young adults yet. The present study examined the effects of an 8-day prospective memory training programme using the Virtual Week computer game in 18–24-year-old students. Using the performance of an active control group as comparison, the study revealed a significant short-lived beneficial training-induced effect on a nearest-transfer task consisting of a different version of the trained task. No evidence was obtained for transfer effects to other tasks measuring prospective memory (near transfer), or to tasks measuring various executive functions or general intelligence (far transfer). These results were compared to those from a previous study in which an identical training and testing protocol was used in 13–15-year-old adolescents. This study did reveal some evidence of near and far transfer. The results of the two studies combined suggest a greater potential for prospective memory training to induce beneficial transfer effects in young adolescents than in young adults.     

AULA virtual reality test as an attention measure: Convergent validity with Conners’ Continuous Performance Test

The majority of neuropsychological tests used to evaluate attention processes in children lack ecological validity. The AULA Nesplora (AULA) is a continuous performance test, developed in a virtual setting, very similar to a school classroom. The aim of the present study is to analyze the convergent validity between the AULA and the Continuous Performance Test (CPT) of Conners. The AULA and CPT were administered correlatively to 57 children, aged 6–16 years (26.3% female) with average cognitive ability (IQ mean = 100.56, SD = 10.38) who had a diagnosis of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) according to DSM-IV-TR criteria. Spearman correlations analyses were conducted among the different variables. Significant correlations were observed between both tests in all the analyzed variables (omissions, commissions, reaction time, and variability of reaction time), including for those measures of the AULA based on different sensorial modalities, presentation of distractors, and task paradigms. Hence, convergent validity between both tests was confirmed. Moreover, the AULA showed differences by gender and correlation to Perceptual Reasoning and Working Memory indexes of the WISC-IV, supporting the relevance of IQ measures in the understanding of cognitive performance in ADHD. In addition, the AULA (but not Conners’ CPT) was able to differentiate between ADHD children with and without pharmacological treatment for a wide range of measures related to inattention, impulsivity, processing speed, motor activity, and quality of attention focus. Additional measures and advantages of the AULA versus Conners’ CPT are discussed.     

Managing information overload in virtual teams: Effects of a structured online team adaptation on cognition and performance

Information overload (IO) indicates the exchange of too much low-quality information in virtual teams. When being overloaded with information, teams need to adapt and to change communication behaviour. This study introduces and tests a structured online team adaptation (STROTA) procedure that enables virtual teams to reduce IO by improving their team mental model quality. STROTA, built from team adaptation models, is a moderated intervention consisting of three stages: (1) individual situation awareness, (2) team situation awareness, and (3) plan formulation. STROTA was tested in the context of an experimental problem-solving task. Participants (N = 363) worked in virtual teams of three and were randomly assigned to one of four experimental conditions: no STROTA, incomplete STROTA (step 1, steps 1–2), and complete STROTA (steps 1–2–3). We found teams that followed a complete STROTA procedure experienced lessened IO over time. Teams with complete STROTA showed the largest development of TMM immediately after STROTA. Finally, multilevel mediation analyses showed that TMM are mediators that explain the influence of STROTA on IO.     

Do experiments in the virtual world effectively predict how pedestrians evaluate electric vehicle sounds in the real world?

New laws stipulate that electric vehicles must emit additional sounds to alert pedestrians of the vehicles’ approach to prevent potential collisions. These new sounds will also influence pedestrians’ impression of the vehicle brand. A methodology has been developed to evaluate electric vehicle (EV) sounds in a virtual-world environment by assessing; (a) detectability and recognisability to ensure pedestrians’ safety, and (b) emotional evaluation of the sound quality to determine its impact on the perception of the vehicle brand. This experimental study examines external validity of the methodology. Fourteen participants evaluated an EV, emitting three sounds, in a traffic scenario in a real-world and a virtual-world environment. The traffic scenario involved a pedestrian ‘standing’ at a residential road junction while the EV travelled at 12 mph from behind the pedestrian, arriving at the junction at one of two pre-set times. Results show that the presented virtual-world methodology accurately predicts pedestrians’ evaluation of detectability of EV sounds and powerfulness and pleasantness of the vehicle brand in the corresponding real-world scenario. It also predicts the ranked order of sounds in the real-world for detection distance and recognisability. Arguably, for similar methods and setups, virtual-worlds would effectively predict pedestrians’ evaluation in the real-world. Interestingly, varying a vehicle’s arrival time, just like a real-world scenario, is found to affect pedestrians’ detection rate. Unlike experiments in the real-world, the presented methodology for experiments in virtual-world benefits from being reliable, quick, easy to implement, with more experimental control and options to easily manipulate any experiment variables.     

Affordance Compatibility Effect for Word Learning in Virtual Reality

Rich sensorimotor interaction facilitates language learning and is presumed to ground conceptual representations. Yet empirical support for early stages of embodied word learning is currently lacking. Finding evidence that sensorimotor interaction shapes learned linguistic representations would provide crucial support for embodied language theories. We developed a gamified word learning experiment in virtual reality in which participants learned the names of six novel objects by grasping and manipulating objects with either their left or right hand. Participants then completed a word–color match task in which they were tested on the same six words and objects. Participants were faster to respond to stimuli in the match task when the response hand was compatible with the hand used to interact with the named object, an effect we refer to as affordance compatibility. In two follow up experiments, we found that merely observing virtual hands interact with the objects was sufficient to acquire a smaller affordance compatibility effect, and we found that the compatibility effect was driven primarily by responses with a compatible hand and not by responses in a compatible spatial location. Our results support theoretical views of language which ground word representations in sensorimotor experiences, and they suggest promising future routes to explore the sensorimotor foundations of higher cognition through immersive virtual experiments.     

虚拟团队理论研究及其发展趋势

本文对近几年来有关虚拟团队产生的背景、基本理论研究思路、研究现状及其未来研究的发展趋势作了初步讨论。文章的主要结论是：对虚拟团队的理论研究正在从静态的、横向的、宏观的层次,向更为动态的、纵向的、微观的层次深入;将更加关注虚拟团队运作机制的研究;将更加关注电子商务背景下的项目虚拟团队;将更多的采用较为系统的现场和实验室研究的方法;将更加注重虚拟团队过程绩效的评估。     

A future-oriented Retirement Transition Adjustment Framework

This theoretical paper presents a person–environment fit framework that extends the Minnesota Theory of Work Adjustment to retirement transition and adjustment. The proposed Retirement Transition and Adjustment Framework (RTAF) also accommodates dynamic intra-individual and environment change over time, configural combinations of variables, and an ecological perspective to psychological-level decisions. The RTAF permits the collection of frequently sampled longitudinal person and environment data, allows for a detailed analysis of change and responsiveness, and can accommodate external influences from the family team, and social, economic and political policies. The paper concludes by using the RTAF to illustrate the types of psychological measurement and analysis opportunities likely to emerge in light of developments in the web, virtual reality, personal informatics and computing and information technology generally.     

Initial planning benefits complex prospective memory at a cost

The effect of initial planning on complex prospective memory was investigated using a virtual environment and a sample of healthy young adults (N?=?34). Participants were assigned to either an initial planning or a control condition and were asked to complete a series of time- and event-based prospective memory tasks. The planning group completed the tasks more quickly and accurately than the control group. However, the total time spent, including both planning and task execution, was comparable for the two groups. Within the planning group, tasks that were planned were more likely to be completed than unplanned tasks, but inclusion of overly detailed information in the plans resulted in poorer performance. These results suggest that although initial planning can be beneficial to task completion, the complexity of a plan may contribute to decrements in performance.     

A meta-analytic investigation of virtuality and information sharing in teams

We uncover new insights on the role of virtuality on team information sharing. A new two-dimensional conceptualization of information sharing (Mesmer-Magnus & DeChurch, 2009) enabled us to reconcile past inconsistencies in the virtual team literature. Recasting the findings of 94 studies (total number of groups = 5596; total N approximately = 19,702) into this framework reveals three key insights. First, virtuality improves the sharing of unique information, but hinders the openness of information sharing. Second, unique information sharing is more important to the performance of face-to-face teams than is open information sharing, whereas open information sharing is more important to the performance of virtual teams than is unique information sharing. Third, the effects of virtuality on information sharing are more curvilinear than linear – such that low levels of virtuality improve information sharing, but high levels hider it. Implications for research and practice are discussed.