A new virtual task to evaluate human place learning
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Updated: Jul 6, 2026

Assessing Human Spatial Navigation in a Virtual Space and its Sensitivity to Exercise
Published on: January 26, 2024
Rosa Cánovas1, Moisés Espínola, Luís Iribarne
1Department of Neuroscience, University of Almería, Carretera de Sacramento s/n, 04120 Almería, Spain.
Abstract:
This study assesses the effectiveness of a new virtual task to evaluate human place learning. This test was based on the hole-board maze, developed for rodent research. Its design provides an easy set of levels of difficulty. Sixty-three undergraduate students (30 men and 33 women) were randomly distributed into three testing conditions; they had to find 3, 5 and 7 rewards, respectively, in a virtual room with 16 possible rewarded positions. Subjects were asked to use the minimum amount of attempts to discover all the rewards in 10 trials. In the initial trial subjects needed to visit almost all the positions to discover the rewards. However, in the last trial an important percentage of subjects did not err. Results showed that all subjects acquired the task but with different amounts of mistakes directly related to the level of difficulty of the condition. In addition, women were slower and less accurate than men. These results agree with previous results in other virtual tasks, and support the spatial component of this test.
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