Spatial Integration in Guided VR Navigation: Effects of Route Structural Complexity and Cue Enrichment

Learning separate routes does not necessarily establish how they connect or how places on different routes are positioned relative to one another. This study examined how across-route integration varied with route structural complexity and navigation support in immersive VR. Forty students learned two routes separately, then followed a connecting route. Basic guidance was compared with an enhanced interface providing turn previews, distance, and landmark cues. Spatial knowledge was assessed through within- and across-route judgments and cognitive-map reconstruction. In the primary analyses, across-route direction and distance errors were larger in the complex layout, whereas within-route differences were smaller. Cognitive maps showed fewer successful reconstructions of route connections (40.0% vs. 72.5% in the simple layout) and lower similarity to constituent route shapes and landmark configurations. Enhanced guidance produced no reliable improvement in these outcomes. These findings associate the complex layout with poorer knowledge of both route configurations and their connections.