Spatial memory of BIM and virtual reality: Mental mapping study

Acquiring accurate spatial memory is critical to many architecture, engineering, construction, and facilities maintenance (AECFM) tasks. The literature has recognized that spatial memory (i.e., the memory of locations and spatial relationships) quality can be affected primarily by visualization methods, i.e., the formats in which spatial information is visualized and presented. In addition to traditional two-dimensional (2D) drawings, emerging visualization methods, such as building information modeling (BIM)-based models and virtual reality (VR), provide more options to visualize complex spatial information in an immersive and interactive way. Although it is well recognized that new visualization methods can benefit performance in many spatial tasks (i.e., tasks that rely or partially rely on spatial memory), there is a lack of explicit evidence about how they affect spatial memory development. Many studies used spatial task performance and spatial memory quality interchangeably, which actually are distinct. This paper presents findings of a mental mapping method (i.e., hand sketching the memorized locations and spatial relationships) to directly measure a person's spatial memory quality of different building components and layouts. First, a human-subject experiment (n=63) was performed in which participants were instructed to review a building model with varying visualization methods [2D, BIM-based three-dimensional (3D), and VR]. Then participants were required to sketch the memorized building landmarks and layouts as an explicit measure of the spatial memory quality, followed by an inspection task in the real building. The result showed a significant impact of visualization methods on the quality of spatial memory, which was not correlated with the inspection performance. The findings suggest that explicit mental mapping measures instead of final task performance are needed for evaluating spatial memory in AECFM tasks.