Evaluation of spatial abilities within a 2D auditory platform game

In this paper, we compare the mental maps created by sighted participants with the maps created by participants with visual impairments during the study of an auditory platform game. The game uses audio cues to convey a 2D side-scrolling view of the spatial layout of the game world. We studied three groups with 9 participants each: a control group of sighted participants playing an audio-visual version of the game, sighted participants playing the audio-only version of the game, and participants with visual impairments playing the audio-only version of the game. Immediately after playing two of the game's levels, we transferred the participants' verbal descriptions of the level's layout onto paper maps and gave each map a "mapping score" that expressed how closely a map matched the actual layout of the game level. The results suggest that in this setting, all participants were able to create maps with roughly the same accuracy no matter which version of the game they played (audio-visual or audio-only) and independent of the participant's level of visual ability (sighted persons or persons with visual impairments).