Immersion and battlefield visualization: Frame of reference effects on navigation tasks and cognitive tunneling

Army officers viewed a battle scenario in one of two computer-based display conditions, The Tethered condition was a 3-D exocentric display and the Immersed condition was a 3-D egocentric display, which allowed 360 degrees panning, coupled with a small 2-D contour map of the entire battle area embedded in the top center of the screen. Tasks included providing verbal reports of new enemy units or changes to existing units, responding to a series of diagnostic questions, and giving confidence ratings for their selected answers. Results showed that Immersed officers were less accurate on questions that required panning as well as questions requiring a count of enemy units than Tethered condition officers. However, confidence ratings for both tasks did not differ between display conditions. These findings indicate that Immersed officers were "cognitively tunneled" into the initial forward field of view, relying too heavily on information in this view and not adequately panning the environment.