A study of spatial cognition in the rural heritage based on VR 3D eye-tracking experiments

Abstract

Traditional Chinese villages act as the essential carriers of China’s rural heritage. Such villages are considered to retain living practices of intangible heritage through know-how, artistic and folk customs, as well as a well-preserved architectural appearance. However, their conservation is at stake due to degradation, abandonment, and urbanization. Spatial cognition is one way of bringing people to the matter of what is important to conserve (attributes) and why they are important (values). This is done by analysing how people perceive and value rural heritage. Traditional methods of gathering spatial cognition data, such as laborious fieldwork or subjective qualitative analyses, often fall short of providing a holistic representation of real-world experiences. This article presents an innovative method for analysing cognitive features in traditional village spaces using an immersive virtual reality equipped with an eye-tracking system. We selected Cheng and Jitou, two traditional Chinese villages, as our case studies. In two virtual reality environments, we captured accurate 3D cognitive data, including participants’ locomotion, gaze point, and sightline. The results indicate that the accessibility of village roads affects the distribution of people’s locomotion, which in turn affects the distribution of people’s areas of interest; the changes in the rhythm of the sightline scale reflect the rhythm of spatial changes in the villages. By broadening the understanding of spatial cognition in traditional Chinese villages related to people’s values, this paper sheds light on an alternative approach to assess the cultural significance of such villages for higher conservation and sustainability.