Studying the Development of Navigation Using Virtual Environments

Research on spatial navigation is essential to understanding how mobile species adapt to their environments. Such research increasingly uses virtual environments (VEs) because, although VE has drawbacks, it allows for standardization of procedures, precision in measuring behaviors, ease in introducing variation, and cross-investigator comparability. Developmental researchers have used a wide range of VE testing methods, including desktop computers, gaming consoles, virtual reality, and phone applications. We survey the paradigms to guide researchers' choices, organizing them by their characteristics using a framework proposed by Girard (2022) in which navigation is reactive or deliberative, and may be tied to sensory input or not. This organization highlights what representations each paradigm indicates. VE tools have enriched our picture of the development of navigation, but much research remains to be done, e.g., determining retest reliability, comparing performance on different paradigms, validating performance against real-world behavior and open sharing. Reliable and valid assessments available on open-science repositories are essential for work on the development of navigation, its neural bases, and its implications for other cognitive domains.