Fig. 5: Experiment procedure.

a Overview of the experimental procedure design. First, the participants completed a Santa Barbara Sense of Direction questionnaire about their sense of direction and a Perspective Taking/Spatial Orientation Task, which assesses spatial orienting ability. They were then asked to walk in a square meadow for five minutes. Next, each subject started walking through Sydney Park along a fixed route with auditory instructions. Global landmarks were not displayed during this exploration phase. Last, the pointing and wayfinding tasks were conducted. b The gear setup for each participant. During the tasks in the VR environment, participants were wearing a 64-channel EEG cap covered by the VR headset with an HP backpack PC on their back and were holding a controller. c A fixed route map of exploration Auditory instructions were used to guide participants through the route. The plants and trees inside and surrounding the scenario were removed for a clear view of the path. d Trial settings for wayfinding and pointing tasks. For each landmark target, the participant was asked to point to the target (pointing task) before moving toward it (wayfinding task). The number labels for each trial are consistent with the labels in c.