The effect of the sound environment on spatial knowledge acquisition in a virtual outpatient polyclinic

This study examines the impact of the sound environment on spatial knowledge acquisition in a virtual outpatient polyclinic. Outpatient polyclinics have a critical role in determining early outpatient treatments to prevent hospitalization or death and reduce hospital burden. However, they have not been widely investigated in the literature. The studies on spatial knowledge have identified environmental elements mainly related to vision with no focus on sound. Currently, there is limited research on the effect of the sound environment on spatial knowledge acquisition in virtual outpatient polyclinics. In this study, a virtually simulated outpatient polyclinic has been created to analyze the effect of varying levels of visual and audio cues. Eighty participants were randomly assigned to one of the four groups: a control (no visual signage and no sound), a visual (visual signage), an only audio (no landmarks and no visual signage), and an audio-visual group (visual signage, landmarks and sound). The virtual environment was presented as a video walkthrough with passive exploration to test spatial knowledge acquisition with tasks based on the landmark-route-survey model. The results showed that a combination of visual signage, landmarks, and the sound environment resulted in higher spatial knowledge acquisition. No significant difference was found between the performance of the visual group and the control group, which shows that signage alone cannot aid spatial knowledge in virtual outpatient polyclinics. Data from the only audio group suggests that landmarks associated with sound can compensate for the lack of visual landmarks that may help design a wayfinding system for users with visual disabilities.