Development of Cognitive Transfer Tasks for Virtual Environments and Applications for Adaptive Instructional Systems

Spatial navigation and spatial learning are important skills with implications for many different fields, and can be trained in Virtual Environments (VEs). Research in these areas presents a critical challenge: how to best design tests of knowledge transfer to measure learning from the VEs. Additionally, spatial learning tasks and VEs can be implemented in Adaptive Instructional Systems (AISs), which could result in improved spatial navigation and learning. The current paper describes the development of transfer tasks to assess different levels of spatial learning from experience in a VE, including recall, recognition, route, bearings, and map drawing transfer tests. Details are provided in regard to how transfer questions were generated and the reasoning behind them. Implications for the use of similar tasks in AISs and Intelligent Tutoring Systems are discussed.