The effects of human following behaviours on decision making during aperture crossing scenarios

Everyday locomotion often requires that we navigate crowded and cluttered environments. Individuals navigating through nonconfined space will require a deviation from the straight path in order to avoid apertures smaller than 1.4 times their shoulder width. When in a crowd, humans will follow the behaviours of those directly in front of them, making changes to their walking speed and direction heading based on the changes made by the people they are following.

The current study aimed to discover whether the decisions made by young adults regarding the passability of an aperture would be influenced by the presence of a leader completing the same nonconfined aperture crossing task.

Participants (N = 24) walked in a virtual reality environment along a 6.5 m pathway towards a goal while avoiding two virtual poles which created an aperture (0.8-1.8 times the participants' shoulder widths). For some trials, a sex-matched avatar (shoulder width of 0.8, 1.0, or 1.2 times the participants' shoulder widths) completed the aperture crossing task, using its own body-scaled information, ahead of the participant.

Participants walked through apertures smaller than 1.4 times their shoulder width (i.e. critical point) regardless of avatars' independent behaviours. Participants began to deviate 3.69 m from the aperture on all trials that required a deviation and approached their goal at a slower speed when the avatar was present.

This study demonstrates that during a nonconfined aperture crossing task, individuals are not influenced by human following behaviours and will continue to make decisions based on their own body-scaled information.