Treasure Hunting in Virtual Environments Self-Organized Criticality in Searches Amid Uncertainty
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5890/DNC.2014.03.001Abstract
Searching experiments conducted in different virtual environments over a gender balanced group of people revealed a gender irrelevant scale-free spread of searching activity on large spatiotemporal scales. The better per- formance of men in virtual environments can be associated with the reg- ularly renewed computer game experience, essentially in games played through a first-person perspective. We suggested a simple self-organized critical model of search, in which the experimentally observed scale-free behavior can be interpreted as a trade-off between the value of exploitation versus exploration amid uncertainty.References
[1] Wann, J.P., Mon-Williams, M. (1996),What does virtual reality NEED?: Human factors issues in the design of threedimensional computer environments, International Journal of Human Computer Studies 44, 829-847.
[2] Darken, R.P. and Sibert, J.L. (1993), A Toolset for Navigation in Virtual Environments, Proceedings of ACM User Interface Software & Technology, 157-165.
[3] Werner, S.and Long, P. (2003), Cognition meets le Corbusier - Cognitive principles of architectural design, in Spatial Cognition III. Lecture notes in artificial intelligence, 112-126, Springer-Verlag.
[4] Two AVI video fragments showing the records of actual searching experiments from the first-person perspective can be found at http://youtu.be/17aNxvZFMRw (the VE model A) and http://youtu.be/ Jooi9ZXRGs (the VE model B).
[5] Blanchard, Ph. and Volchenkov, D. (2008), Intelligibility and first passage times in complex urban networks, Proceedings of the Royal Society A 464, 2153-2167; doi:10.1098/rspa.2007.0329.
[6] Blanchard, Ph. and Volchenkov,D. (2009),MathematicalAnalysis of Urban Spatial Networks, Understanding Complex Systems, Springer, Berlin / Heidelberg.
[7] Blanchard, Ph. and Volchenkov, D. (2011), Introduction to Random Walks on Graphs and Databases, Synergetics, Springer, Berlin / Heidelberg.
[8] Dillon, B.A. (2006), EventWrap-Up: Girls 'N Games 2006, Gamasutra, 18 May 2006.
[9] Hamilton, E. (2009), The Girl Gamer's Manifesto, GameSpot, 11 Feb 2009.
[10] Colzato, L.S., van Leeuwen, P.J.A.,Wildenberg,W.P.M. van den, and Hommel, B. (2010),DOOM'd to switch: superior cognitive flexibility in players of first person shooter games, Frontiers in Psychology, 1, Article 8.
[11] Lawton, C.A. (1994), Gender differences in way-finding strategies: Relationship to spatial ability and spatial anxiety, Sex Roles, 30(11-12), 765-779.
[12] Devlin, A.S. and Bernstein, J. (1995), Interactive wayfinding: Use of cues by men and women, Journal of Environmental Psychology, 15, 23-38.
[13] Federal Highway Administration. Nationwide personal transportation study 1995: Transportation user's views of quality. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Transportation (1997).
[14] Moffat, S.D., Hampson, E., and Hatzipantelis, M. (1998), Navigation in a "virtual" maze: sex differences and correlation with psychometric measures of spatial ability in humans, Evolution and Human Behaviour, 19, 73-78.
[15] Voyer, D., Voyer, S., and Bryden, M.P. (1995), Magnitude of sex differences in spatial abilities: a meta-analysis and consideration of critical variables, Psychological Bulletin, 117, 250 - 270.
[16] Cutmore, T.R.H., Hine, T.J., Maberly, K.J., Langford, N.M., and Hawgood, G. (2000), Cognitive and gender factors influencing navigation in a virtual environment, International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 53, 223-249.
[17] Klatzky, R.L., Loomis, J.M., Beall, A.C., Chance, S.S., and Golledge, R.G. (1998), Spatial updating of self-position and orientation during real, imagined, and virtual locomotion, Psychological Science, 9(4), 293-298.
[18] Riecke, B.E., Schulte-Pelkum, J., and Bülthoff, H.H. (2005), Perceiving Simulated Ego-Motions in Virtual Reality- Comparing Large Screen Displays with HMDs, SPIE 2005 Conference Proceedings, San Jose, USA .
[19] Komin, N., Erdmann, U., and Schimansky-Geier, L. (2004), Random walk theory applied to daphnia motion, Fluctuation and Noise Letters , 4, L151-L159.
[20] Schimansky-Geier, L., Erdmann, U., and Komin, N. (2005), Advantages of hopping on a zigzag course, Physica A, 351(1), 51-59.
[21] Bartumeus, F. and Levin, S.A. (2008), Fractal reorientation clocks: Linking animal behavior to statistical patterns of search, PNAS, 105(49), 19072-19077; doi:10.1073/pnas.0801926105
[22] Bak, P., Tang, C., Wiesenfeld, K. (1987), Self-organized criticality: an explanation of 1/ f noise, Physical Review Letters 59(4), 381-384.
[23] Cohen, J.D. and Aston-Jones G. (2005), Cognitive neuroscience: Decision amid uncertainty, Nature, 436, 471-472.
[24] Cohen, J.D., McClure, S.M., and Yu, A.J. (2007), Should I stay or should I go? How the human brain manages the trade-off between exploitation and exploration, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 362, 933-942.
[25] Gittins, J.C. (1989), Multi-armed bandit allocation indices. Wiley - Interscience Series in Systems and Optimization, JohnWiley & Sons, Chichester.
[26] Yu, A.J. and Dayan, P. (2005), Uncertainty, Neuromodulation, and Attention, Neuron, 46, 681-692.
[27] Bartumeus, F., Catalan, J., Viswanathan, G.M., Raposo, E., and da Luz, M.G.E. (2008), The influence of turning angles on the success of non-oriented animal searches, Journal of Theoretical Biology , 252, 43-55.
[28] Hurst, H.E., Black, R.P., and Simaika, Y.M. (1975), Long-term storage: an experimental study, Constable, London.
[29] Viswanathan, G.M., Afanasyev, V., Buldyrev, S.V., Murphy, E.J., Prince, P.A., and Stanley, H.E. (1996), Lévy flight search patterns of wandering albatrosses, Nature (London), 381, 413.
[30] Bartumeus, F.(2009), Behavioral intermittence, levy patterns, and randomness in animal movement, Oikos, 118, 488- 494.
[31] Shlesinger, M., Zaslavsky, G.M., and Klafter, J. (1993), Strange kinetics, Nature, 363, 31-37.
[32] Levy, M. and Solomon, S. (1996), Power Laws are Logarithmic Boltzmann Laws, International Journal of Modern Physics C, 7(4), 595-601.
[33] Levandowsky,M., Klafter, J., andWhite, B.S. (1988), Swimming behavior and chemosensory responses in the protistan microzooplankton as a function of the hydrodynamic regime, Bulletin of Marine Science, 43, 758-763.
[34] Viswanathan, G.M., Buldyrev, S., Havlin, S., Luz, M.G.E. da, Raposo, E.P., and Stanley, H.E.(1999), Optimizing the success of random searches, Nature (London), 401, 911.
[35] Nathan, R., Getz, W.M., Revilla, E., Holyoak, M., Kadmon, R., Saltz, D., and Smouse, P.E. (2008), A movement ecology paradigm for unifying organismal movement research, PNAS, 105(49), 19052-19059.
[36] Buldyrev, S.V., Havlin, S., Kazakov, A.Ya., da Luz, M.G.E., Raposo, E.P., Stanley, H.E., and Viswanathan G.M. (2001), Average time spent by Lévy flights and walks on an interval with absorbing boundaries, , Physical Review E, 64, 041108.
[37] Atkinson, R.P.D., Rhodes, C.J., MacDonald D.W., and Anderson, R.M. (2002), Scale-Free Dynamics in theMovement Patterns of Jackals, Oikos, 98 (1), 134-140.
[38] Brockmann, D., Hufnagel, L., and Geisel, T. (2006), The scaling laws of human travel, Nature, 439, 462-465.
[39] Sims, D.W. et al, (2008), Scaling laws of marine predator search behaviour, Nature, 451, 1098-1102.
[40] Bartumeus, F. (2007), Lévy processes in animal movement: an evolutionary hypothesis, Fractals, 15(2), 151-162.
[41] Viswanathan, G.M., Raposo, E.P., and da Luz, M.G.E. (2008), Lévy flights and uperdiffusion in the context of biological encounters and random searches, Physics of Life Reviews, 5 (3), 133-150.
[42] Flajolet, P. and Sedgewick, R. (2009), Analytic Combinatorics, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Article Metrics
Usage tracking begins September 1, 2026.