## 4 Results
### Exploration of the Virtual Environment-Descriptive Data
#### 4.1.3 Statistical Analysis of User Logs and Mental Measurements  
Using the experiment's logged data (Data S1), we extracted the following virtual movement parameters:  
* exploration time (the total time a participant spent in the environment, in seconds)
* time spent pausing (the amount of time spent not walking, in seconds)
* average exploration speed (walking/pausing time considered, in metres per second)
* travel distance (the overall distance a participant travelled, in metres)
* number of stops (the number of times a participant paused exploration)
* number of keypresses (raw movement interface usage)
* number of direction changes (the number of times a participant changed their keyboard-driven movement direction)  
Participants also self-reported their visual cognitive styles (using objects/spatial scales) and were tested in their visual recognition and spatial relations identification abilities. We extracted the following mental scales:  
* self-reported OSIVQ object (on a 0-5 scale)
* self-reported OSIVQ spatial (on a 0-5 scale)
* Object Visual Recognition Test (on a 0-10 scale)
* Spatial Relations Identification Task (on a 0-10 scale)  
Differences between sexes--We explored the differences between sexes in the extracted virtual movement parameters and mental scales. The Wilcoxon rank-sum test identified differences between males and females in their Exploration Time, Time Spent Pausing, and Exploration Speed (Table 1). Figure 6: Virtual trajectories (paths) of all individual participants combined (**a**), Gridded AoI average for all paths (**b**). The average participant stood still for approximately a quarter of the total exploration time (making 37 stops on average, idling for 116 s). The previous analyses of the sample revealed two opposite subsets consisting of \"runners\" (mostly males) and \"lookers\" (mostly females)--see Figure 7,b. The controller's walkthrough speed in the experimental interface was set to a constant 5 m/s. By pausing, men reduced their average walkthrough speed to 4.47 m/s, women to 4.09 m/s. Participants who exceeded the 10-min exploration limit were all females that had spent a considerable time (>4 min) pausing. Males tended to utilize their keyboard movement interface much more often, making about three times more movement direction changes on average compared to females. Differences in VR expertise--We compared participants with respect to their self-reported VR experience. Participants reported themselves as either experienced or not experienced with VR use, and these two groups were compared. Significant differences were identified between non-proficient and proficient VR users in the ability to identify spatial relations in the virtual scene (Table 2). \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c c c c c c} \hline \hline  & **Vk Users** & **Mean** & **Std. Dev.** & **Median** & **1 st Qu.** & **3 rd Qu.** & \begin{tabular}{c} **Shapiro-Wilk** \\ **Test** \\ \end{tabular} & \(p\)**-Value** & **[PERSON] W** & **Cohen’s d** \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{\begin{tabular}{c} **Exploration Time** \\ **[s]** \\ \end{tabular} } & M & 316.2 & 141.27 & 314 & 216.8 & 429 & 0.78 & \multirow{2}{*}{0.03*} & \multirow{2}{*}{21.5} & \multirow{2}{*}{1.15} \\ \cline{2-2} \cline{6-10}  & F & 475.2 & 136.03 & 450.5 & 371 & 600.8 & 0.11 & & \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{\
\begin{tabular}{c} **Time Spent** \\ **Pausing [s]** \\ \end{tabular} } & M & 48.3 & 41.65 & 47 & 11 & 70 & 0.4 & 0.0001 & \\ \cline{2-2} \cline{6-10}  & F & 184.4 & 72.76 & 187.5 & 124.2 & 244.5 & 0.17 & & \\ \cline{2-2} \cline{6-10}  & M & 4.47 & 0.26 & 4.55 & 4.31 & 4.66 & 0.36 & 0.012* & 83 & 1.33 \\ \cline{2-2} \cline{6-10}  & F & 4.09 & 0.31 & 4.05 & 3.91 & 4.32 & 0.85 & & \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{
\begin{tabular}{c} **Direction Changes** \\ **[Count]** \\ \end{tabular} } & M & 377.4 & 309 & 316.5 & 246.2 & 426.2 & 0.89 & & \\ \cline{2-2} \cline{6-10}  & F & 111.8 & 133.29 & 54 & 19 & 173.8 & 0.8 & & \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 1: Analysis of measured variables according to sex.