Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Spatial updating during self-motion can be effortless, however, in virtual reality if there are inconsistent cues about self-motion, spatial updating of egocentric representations of object locations usually relies on perceived scene motion orimagery of a spatial situation model. Strong presence and illusory self-motion with a quick onset are presumed necessaryfor effortless spatial updating if self-motion is signaled visually only. In the reported experiment, participants performedspatial updating compensating for visually signaled forward self-motion in a virtual scene presented in a head-mounteddisplay. Higher visual detail in the scene improved performance only slightly. Overall, the result pattern suggests thatparticipants did not experience illusory self-motion that could support effortless updating despite more favorable conditionsthan in a previous study. Several modifications to the experiment are discussed as further tests of conditions fosteringeffortless updating in virtual reality.