Towards a characterization of human spatial exploration behavior.

ABSTRACT: Spatial exploration is a complex behavior that can be used to gain information about developmental processes, personality traits, or mental disorders. Typically, this is done by analyzing movement throughout an unknown environment. However, in human research, until now there has been no overview on how to analyze movement trajectories with regard to exploration. In the current paper, we provide a discussion of the most common movement measures currently used in human research on spatial exploration, and suggest new indices to capture the efficiency of exploration. We additionally analyzed a large dataset (n = 409) of human participants exploring a novel virtual environment to investigate whether movement measures could be assigned to meaningful higher-order components. Hierarchical cluster

SUBMITTER: Baumann V 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11754322 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature