Planning a virtual water maze study

Most problems in virtual maze studies are baked in before the first participant arrives. A little planning goes a long way.

Before you start

• Pre-register your hypotheses and primary measures, for example on OSF.
• Ask about motion sickness and build in breaks.
• Record gaming experience as a covariate. It matters more than people expect.

Cues and layout

Use several distinct landmarks in the distance, keep them fixed, and don't park the goal right beside one of them.

Trials

Typical designs run 8 to 24 learning trials and one or two probes, with start points varied pseudo-randomly.

Analysis

Make directional and proximity measures your primary outcomes rather than latency alone, and keep strategy classification as a secondary outcome.

Reporting

State the display, the controls, the arena size in virtual units and in metres, the cue layout, trial counts and every exclusion.