Appreciating Individual Differences

Abstract

Learning the spatial layout of an environment is essential in application domains including military and emergency personnel training. Training each and every member of staff, however, within a real-world space cannot practically be achieved, especially if the space is under-development or potentially unsafe. The aim of this chapter is to demonstrate how individual difference factors can significantly impact upon training requirements when acquiring spatial knowledge from a virtual environment. Although experimental setup is not mulsemedia, the impact of appreciating individual differences is of direct relevance to mulsemedia technologies. This chapter shows how individual differences impact information assimilation; showing that user information assimilation, and therefore feedback, must be personalised for individual needs. The chapter looks at the importance of: gender, orientation skill, cognitive style, system knowledge, and environmental knowledge – showing how individual user differences significantly influence the training time required to ensure effective virtual environment spatial knowledge acquisition (SKA). We introduce the problem of contradicting literature in the area of SKA, and discuss how the amount of exposure time given to a person during VE training is responsible for the feasibility of SKA.