Alberta University researchers Marcia Spetch and Vadim Bulitko have completed a study that probed deeper into the reasoning and decision-making process involved in hiding and seeking objects.

Among what they studied are the children's hide-and-seek game, police searches and video games like Half-Life 2. Aside from helping develop more realistic game environments, their study aims to help come up with higher search-enhancing tools for police officers.

The study tapped adult participants who were made to look for objects in a room that had a virtual-reality setting similar to a real room size. According to Spetch, a psychologist, when people are looking for objects their tendency is to begin in areas close to their starting point. However, the opposite is true when they are hiding objects.

Spetch explained, "People that had already hidden objects tended to move further away from the starting place consistent with where people normally hide objects…. It was as though the hiding primed them into what kinds of locations things might be hidden in."

Aside from understanding better people's hiding behavior, knowing their motivation and other related factors such as time, stress and the value of the object will help researchers predict ideal hiding spots in any given place. Bulitko, a computer scientist, said such information will provide programmers more information they could use in creating computer-generated characters more known as game-bots.

Bulitko said, "I think players expect human-like characters in the game to behave like humans. And if somebody appears like a human in a game, they should also have the same sort of abilities as the human player."

The study was also published in the Learning and Motivation magazine.