Evaluation of Visuo-Spatial Perspective Taking Skills using a Digital Game with Different Levels of Immersion

Digital games serve as highly effective, scalable tools for training visuo-spatial perspective-taking skills in primary school students. By leveraging virtual environments, educators can facilitate embodied cognitive processes that are essential for spatial reasoning, offering significant practical advantages over traditional real-life testing methods. These benefits include streamlined setup, enhanced portability, and the capacity for automated data collection, all of which contribute to a more efficient pedagogical framework for developing spatial awareness in young learners.

Research involving 98 primary school students demonstrates that the ability to navigate within a virtual environment is a critical factor in skill acquisition. Participants utilizing immersive and semi-immersive digital platforms consistently outperform those restricted to non-immersive, fixed-view approaches. While higher levels of immersion—such as those provided by head-mounted displays—successfully increase a user's subjective sense of presence, they do not necessarily yield statistically superior performance outcomes compared to semi-immersive screen-based alternatives. This suggests that the primary driver of cognitive improvement is the interactive nature of the environment rather than the intensity of the immersive hardware.

Despite the clear educational potential of these digital tools, widespread adoption faces ongoing challenges. Current hardware limitations, including the risk of motion sickness and the high financial costs associated with advanced virtual reality systems, remain significant barriers to integration in standard classroom settings. Nevertheless, the evidence confirms that virtual environments provide a flexible and effective medium for training spatial skills, provided that the chosen level of immersion balances technical accessibility with the functional requirements of the training task.