Victor R Schinazi

Bond University · Department of Psychology

The idea that humans use flexible map-like representations of their environment to guide spatial navigation has a long and controversial history. One reason for this enduring controversy might be that individuals vary considerably in their ability to form and utilize cognitive maps. Here we investigate the behavioral and neuroanatomical signatures...

Spatial navigation in the absence of vision has been investigated from a variety of perspectives and disciplines. These different approaches have progressed our understanding of spatial knowledge acquisition by blind individuals, including their abilities, strategies, and corresponding mental representations. In this review, we propose a framework...

Living in a disadvantaged neighborhood is associated with worse health and early mortality. Although many mechanisms may partially account for this effect, disadvantaged neighborhood environments are hypothesized to elicit stress and emotional responses that accumulate over time and influence physical and mental health. However, evidence for neighb...

Exploring a city panorama from a vantage point is a popular tourist activity. Typical audio guides that support this activity are limited by their lack of responsiveness to user behavior and by the difficulty of matching audio descriptions to the panorama. These limitations can inhibit the acquisition of information and negatively affect user exper...

The role of affective states in learning has recently attracted considerable attention in education research. The accurate prediction of affective states can help increase the learning gain by incorporating targeted interventions that are capable of adjusting to changes in the individual affective states of students. Until recently, most work on th...

Hippocampal atrophy is a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease and is associated with deficits in navigation. We investigated whether a novel digital assessment, the Spatial Performance Assessment for Cognitive Evaluation (SPACE), can predict hippocampal integrity beyond traditional neuropsychological tests in older adults. Forty older male participants...

Unlike classic audio guides, intelligent audio guides can detect users’ level of attention and help them regain focus. In this paper, we investigate the detection of mind wandering (MW) from eye movements in a use case with a long focus distance. We present a novel MW annotation method for combined audio-visual stimuli and collect annotated MW data...

INTRODUCTION: Alzheimer′s disease affects spatial abilities that are often overlooked in standard cognitive screening tools. We assessed whether the spatial navigation tasks in the Spatial Performance Assessment for Cognitive Evaluation (SPACE) can complement existing tools such as the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA). METHODS: 348 participants...

Age-related cognitive decline associations with human electroencephalography (EEG) have previously focused on periodic activity. However, EEG is primarily made up of non-oscillatory aperiodic activity, which can be characterised with an exponent and offset value. In a secondary analysis of a cohort of 111 healthy participants aged 17 – 71 years, we...

The Spatial Performance Assessment for Cognitive Evaluation (SPACE) is a novel iPad serious game designed to identify differences in spatial ability indicative of early signs of cognitive impairment. This paper reports on the development of SPACE and presents the results from three usability studies across different ages. Study 1 compared the tradi...

SpecParam (formally known as FOOOF) allows for the refined measurements of electroencephalography periodic and aperiodic activity, and potentially provides a non-invasive measurement of excitation: inhibition balance. However, little is known about the psychometric properties of this technique. This is integral for understanding the usefulness of S...

Parkinson's disease (PD) has been associated with greater total power in canonical frequency bands (i.e., alpha, beta) of the resting electroencephalogram (EEG). However, PD has also been associated with a reduction in the proportion of total power across all frequency bands. This discrepancy may be explained by aperiodic activity (exponent and off...

Background Heart rate variability biofeedback (HRV-BF) can be used for stress management. Recent feasibility studies suggest that delivering HRV-BF in virtual reality (VR) is associated with better user experience (UX) and might yield more beneficial changes in HRV than two-dimensional screens. The effectiveness of a VR-supported HRV-BF interventio...

Gender differences in navigation performance are a recurrent and controversial topic. Previous research suggests that men outperform women in navigation tasks and that men and women exhibit different navigation strategies. Here, we investigate whether motivation to complete the task moderates the relationship between navigation performance and gend...

SpecParam (formally known as FOOOF) allows for the refined measurements of electroencephalography periodic and aperiodic activity, and potentially provides a non-invasive measurement of excitation:inhibition balance. However, little is known about the psychometric properties of this technique. This is integral for understanding the usefulness of Sp...

Digital maps on personal devices (e.g., phones) are common tools used to aid navigation. Different types of digital maps can influence spatial knowledge acquisition, and this effect might depend on whether the user interacts with an forward-up or north-up map. In spatial cognition theory, these differences can be used to support either sequential o...

Approximately 40-60% of falls in the elderly lead to injuries, resulting in disability and loss of independence. Despite the higher prevalence of falls and morbidity rates in cognitively impaired individuals, most fall risk assessments fail to account for mental status. In addition, successful fall prevention programmes in cognitively normal adults...

Gender differences in navigation performance are a recurrent and controversial topic. Previous research suggests that men outperform women in navigation tasks and that men and women exhibit different navigation strategies. Here, we investigate whether motivation to complete the task moderates the relationship between navigation performance and gend...

Parkinsons Disease (PD) has been associated with greater total power in canonical frequency bands (i.e., alpha, beta) of the resting electroencephalogram (EEG). However, PD has also been associated with a reduction in the proportion of total power across all frequency bands. This discrepancy may be explained by aperiodic activity (exponent and offs...

Current advances in airplane cockpit design and layout are often driven by a need to improve the pilot's awareness of the aircraft's state. This involves an improvement in the flow of information from aircraft to pilot. However, providing the aircraft with information on the pilot's state remains an open challenge. This work takes a first step towa...

Background and objective: Work-related stress affects a large part of today's workforce and is known to have detrimental effects on physical and mental health. Continuous and unobtrusive stress detection may help prevent and reduce stress by providing personalised feedback and allowing for the development of just-in-time adaptive health interventi...

Heart rate variability biofeedback (HRV-BF) is frequently used for stress management. Recently, virtual reality technology has gained attention for delivery, promising higher immersion, motivation, and attention than classical screens. However, the effects of different technologies and breathing techniques are not yet understood. In this study, 107...

Relying on shared tasks and stimuli to conduct research can enhance the replicability of findings and allow a community of researchers to collect large data sets across multiple experiments. This approach is particularly relevant for experiments in spatial navigation, which often require the development of unfamiliar large-scale virtual environment...

Background People with age-related macular degeneration (AMD) can report reduced mental health. There is also evidence that they struggle with daily tasks because of vision loss. Aims The purpose of this study was to assess the psychological impact of instrumental activities of daily living on people with simulated AMD. Method Twenty-four normall...

Smart Cities already surround us, and yet they are still incomprehensibly far from directly impacting everyday life. While current Smart Cities are often inaccessible, the experience of everyday citizens may be enhanced with a combination of the emerging technologies Digital Twins (DTs) and Situated Analytics. DTs represent their Physical Twin (PT)...

Smart Cities already surround us, and yet they are still incomprehensibly far from directly impacting everyday life. While current Smart Cities are often inaccessible, the experience of everyday citizens may be enhanced with a combination of the emerging technologies Digital Twins (DTs) and Situated Analytics. DTs represent their Physical Twin (PT)...

Sensors have become ubiquitous in buildings but are rarely connected to a network, and their potential to analyse the performance, use, and interaction with a building is not yet fully realised. In the coming years, we expect sensors in buildings to become part of the Internet of Things (IoT) and grow in numbers to form a Dense Indoor Sensor Networ...

Knowledge of users’ affective states can improve their interaction with smartphones by providing more personalized experiences (e.g., search results and news articles). We present an affective state classification model based on data gathered on smartphones in real-world environments. From touch events during keystrokes and the signals from the ine...

The reliable assessment of cognitive functioning is critical to the study of brain-behaviour relationships. Yet conditions that are synchronous which ageing, including visual decline, are easily overlooked when interpreting cognitive test scores. The purpose of this study was to demonstrate the negative consequences of visual impairments on cogniti...

In the event of fires and other hazards, visual guidance systems that support evacuation are critical for the safety of individuals. Current visual guidances for evacuations are typically non-adaptive signs in that they always indicate the same exit route independently of the hazard’s location. Adaptive signage systems can facilitate wayfinding dur...

Relying on shared tasks and stimuli to conduct research can enhance the replicability of findings and allow a community of researchers to collect large data sets across multiple experiments. This approach is particularly relevant for experiments in spatial navigation, which often require the development of unfamiliar large-scale virtual environment...

Purpose: Investigating difficulties during activities of daily living is a fundamental first step for the development of vision-related intervention and rehabilitation strategies. One way to do this is through visual impairment simulations. The aim of this review is to synthesize and assess the types of simulation methods that have been used to sim...

Recent advances in Augmented Reality (AR), the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing, and Digital Twins transform the types, rates, and volume of information generated in buildings as well as the mediums through which they can be perceived by users. These advances push the standard approach of media architecture to embed screens in the built en...

The talk was given in the Best Paper Candidate session at 11:30am CET on the 24th of March 2021 at the 19th IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications (PerCom 2021) in Kassel, Germany. This version of the talk was pre-recorded as a backup by the author. The teaser summarized the paper in one minute and has been circulat...

Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN) has been advanced as an alternative for creating indoor sensor networks that extends beyond its original long-distance communication purpose. For the present paper, we developed a Dense Indoor Sensor Network (DISN) with 390 sensor nodes and three gateways and empirically evaluated its performance for half a y...

We present a large data of indoor Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN) network metadata to study Dense Indoor Sensor Networks (DISN). We collected 14 million transmissions from 390 sensors between date February 2020 and date September 2020. The transmissions have been received by 3 gateways across 8 floors and distances up to 64 m. The prototype...

The talk was given in the Best Paper Candidate session at 11:30am CET on the 24th of March 2021 at the 19th IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications (PerCom 2021) in Kassel, Germany. This version of the talk was pre-recorded as a backup by the author. The teaser summarized the paper in one minute and has been circulat...

Purpose: The aim of this review is to synthesise the types of simulation methods that have been used to simulate age-related macular degeneration (AMD) during activities of daily living. Since investigating activities of daily living is a fundamental first step in developing intervention and rehabilitation strategies, it is imperative that simulati...

Signage systems are critical for communicating spatial information during wayfinding among a plethora of noise in the environment. A proper signage system can improve wayfinding performance and user experience by reducing the perceived complexity of the environment. However, previous models of sign-based wayfinding do not incorporate realistic nois...

Renewable energy systems (RES) can impact landscape aesthetics and influence the public's perception of the landscape and their acceptance of large infrastructure projects. Perceptual processes have consequences for both physiological and behavioral reactions to visual landscape changes and have not been systematically assessed in the context of RE...

Background The high prevalence of office stress and its detrimental health consequences are of concern to individuals, employers and society at large. Laboratory studies investigating office stress have mostly relied on data from participants that were tested individually on abstract tasks. In this study, we examined the effect of psychosocial offi...

Dense crowds in public spaces have often caused serious security issues at large events. In this paper, we study the 2010 Love Parade disaster, for which a large amount of data (e.g. research papers, professional reports and video footage) exist. We reproduce the Love Parade disaster in a three-dimensional computer simulation calibrated with data f...

The inspection of feature-rich information spaces often requires supportive tools that reduce visual clutter without sacrificing details. One common approach is to use focus+context lenses that provide multiple views of the data. While these lenses present local details together with global context, they require additional manual interaction. In th...

Gaining awareness of the user's affective states enables smartphones to support enriched interactions that are sensitive to the user's context. To accomplish this on smartphones, we propose a system that analyzes the user's text typing behavior using a semi-supervised deep learning pipeline for predicting affective states measured by valence, arous...

A carefully designed map can reduce pedestrians’ cognitive load during wayfinding and may be an especially useful navigation aid in crowded public environments. In the present paper, we report three studies that investigated the effects of map complexity and crowd movement on wayfinding time, accuracy and hesitation using both online and laboratory...

Current Mixed Reality (MR) systems rely on a variety of sensors (e.g., cameras, eye tracking, GPS) to create immersive experiences. Data collected by these sensors are necessary to generate detailed models of a user and the environment that allow for different interactions with the virtual and the real world. Generally, these data contain sensitive...

Virtual reality (VR) experiments are increasingly employed because of their internal and external validity compared to real-world observation and laboratory experiments, respectively. VR is especially useful for geographic visualizations and investigations of spatial behavior. In spatial behavior research, VR provides a platform for studying the re...

Investigating the interactions among multiple participants is a challenge for researchers from various disciplines, including the decision sciences and spatial cognition. With a local area network and dedicated software platform, experimenters can efficiently monitor the behavior of the participants that are simultaneously immersed in a desktop vir...

The collective behavior of human crowds often exhibits surprisingly regular patterns of movement. These patterns stem from social interactions between pedestrians such as when individuals imitate others, follow their neighbors, avoid collisions with other pedestrians, or push each other. While some of these patterns are beneficial and promote effic...

Cognitive neuroscience can provide novel and interesting techniques for investigating spatial and geographic thinking. However, the incorporation of neuroscientific methods still lacks the theoretical motivation necessary for the progression of geography as a discipline. Rather than reflecting a shortcoming of neuroscience, this weakness has develo...

Telling stories is as old as humanity. It was Herodotus (484-425 BCE), the Greek scholar often known as the "father of history", who proclaimed in The Histories both our collective reasons and worries about preserving stories. He wrote: This is the display of the inquiry of Herodotus of Halicarnassus, so that things done by man not be forgotten i...

EVE is a framework for the setup, implementation, and evaluation of experiments in virtual reality. The framework aims to reduce repetitive and error-prone steps that occur during experiment-setup while providing data management and evaluation capabilities. EVE aims to assist researchers who do not have specialized training in computer science. The...

Previous research in spatial cognition has often relied on simple spatial tasks in static environments in order to draw inferences regarding navigation performance. These tasks are typically divided into categories (e.g., egocentric or allocentric) that reflect different two-systems theories. Unfortunately, this two-systems approach has been insuff...

R script for correlation/loading visualisation. Short script to visualise the factor loadings and correlation matrix based on the design used by [74] and adapted for our purpose. Detailed instructions on how to create such a visualisation can be found at http://rpubs.com/danmirman/plotting_factor_analysis. (R)

Instructions for participants. Text handed out to the participants before the experiment. (ODT)

Database export. Export of the participant data, ready for loading into Matlab. (MAT)

Signage systems are critical for communicating environmental information. Signage that is visible and properly located can assist individuals in making efficient navigation decisions during wayfinding. Drawing upon concepts from information theory, we propose a framework to quantify the wayfinding information available in a virtual environment. Tow...

Previous research in spatial cognition has often relied on simple spatial tasks in staticenvironments in order to draw inferences regarding navigation performance. These tasksare typically divided into categories (e.g., egocentric or allocentric) that reflect differenttwo-systems theories. Unfortunately, this two-systems approach has been insuffici...

Symposium S2: Spatial Representation and Processing – What Information Do We Need?