The Assessment of Spatial Orientation Using Virtual Reality Techniques

Visual-spatial ability has been identified as one of the primary factors of intelligence. Numerous tests, including paper-and-pencil tasks and laboratory experiments, have attempted to provide an accurate measure of this ability. However, the majority of these tests serve only as surrogate measures of visual-spatial ability and may not provide a precise prediction of the individuals' performance in a real environment. We propose a new approach for evaluating spatial ability. In this article, we introduce the use of virtual reality (VR) or virtual environments (VEs) as a new method to measure human spatial orientation. We then discuss the advantages of using VR or VE over traditional measures. We also comment on their limitations and their future direction.