Table 1.

Main spatio-temporal characteristics of the three encoding contexts.

	Virtual reality (VR)			Real world (RW)			Standard Laboratory (SL)
	Mean	Min	Max	Mean	Min	Max	Mean	MIN	Max
Encoding	00:00:42:25	00:00:42:24	00:00:42:38	10:04:17:38	02:19:28:12	17:01:57:46	00:00:14:51	00:00:14:14	00:00:15:08
Retention	01:00:43:08	00:22:02:06	01:05:51:50	03:21:20:29	00:02:13:04	12:16:08:30	00:00:18:34	00:00:11:31	00:00:23:08
Path length	4.5	2.8	5.3	972.8	99.4	2495.0	n.a	n.a	n.a

Encoding: time between the encoding of the first and the last object. Retention: time between the encoding of the last object and the retrieval of the first object (explicit source retrieval task). Times are in the format “DAYS:HOURS:MINUTES:SECONDS”. Path length: The participants' total movement during the encoding phase. For the VR protocol the values correspond to “virtual” kilometers in the virtual town. For the RW protocol, the path length corresponds to kilometers in the real world. The SL protocol did not involve any real or virtual movement of the participant. VR virtual reality, RW real world, SL standard laboratory, n.a. not applicable.