Acquisition of Landmark Knowledge From Static and Dynamic Presentation of Route Maps (original) (raw)
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Effect of Landmark Type on Route Memory in Unfamiliar Homogenous Environment
Psychological Studies, 2017
Landmarks are objects that have salience that is either visual, semantic or structural. Recent researches have pointed out observer characteristics that make a landmark salient. These have been termed cognitive salience. This study investigated the effects of two components of cognitive salience, familiarity and degree of recognition, on route memory. The first experiment examined the effect of familiarity of landmark and ease with which it could be recognized (degree of recognition) on remembering a route, while in the second experiment only degree of recognition was varied while holding familiarity constant. Two types of landmarks (text and image) were shown to participants who had to recollect course taken at decision points during wayfinding tasks. Participants were shown navigation videos generated using Squareland Model. The videos had six decision points each having one landmark, and the participants were required to indicate the direction of the turn when the landmarks were shown again. Results showed that pictorial landmarks (high degree of recognition) were better facilitators of route memory than textual landmarks (low degree of recognition). Results also indicated that familiar buildings served as better landmarks than unfamiliar buildings. In the second experiment another level of degree of recognition (medium) was added and compared with high and low levels. Results confirmed the findings of the first experiment with high degree of recognition being the best facilitator followed by medium and low degree of recognition. Our findings lend empirical support to the concept of cognitive salience proposed by Caduff and Timpf (Cogn Process 9:249-267, 2008) and highlight the importance of observer characteristics in determining what constitutes as good landmark.
Remembering Routes: Streets and Landmarks
Applied Cognitive Psychology, 2012
Route directions are often given on request in situ, requiring the inquirer to remember the directions. Previous work has shown that landmarks are more memorable than street names. However, in those studies, the names of landmarks were more vivid and distinctive than the street names. In two experiments, we disentangled vividness/distinctiveness from landmark/street. The major factor in memorability of routes was vividness/distinctiveness, with a slight advantage to streets. Route directions were remembered better when either the landmarks, the street names or both were more vivid and distinctive. Those high in mental imagery read the descriptions faster and remembered them better. Thus, vividness in the stimuli and visual imagery in the mind augment constructing and remembering spatial mental models because forming spatial mental models relies in part on spatial structure but also on associative learning, and vividness and visual imagery promote associative learning. The findings have implications for learning in general.
2016
Current car navigation systems use maps that show part of a region and are sequentially presented as the driver moves along a route, displaying information that is relevant to immediate guidance, such as the surrounding streets and turn indicators. Rizzardo, Colle, McGregor, and Wylie (2013) have shown that sequentially presented, partial maps populated with landmark objects can also facilitate spatial knowledge acquisition. Spatial knowledge is useful for evaluating GPS instructions and navigating after the fact. However, the optimal number of landmarks on map segments has not been extensively tested. The Object-Based Spatial-Episodic Representations for Visual Environments (OBSERVE) theory indicates that sets of landmark object-relations are an important component of spatial learning. Landmark objects do not necessarily need to form a metric coordinate system, although sets of objects may have quantitative spatial (e.g., angular) relations among themselves, learned episodically (Colle, 2015). The number of concurrent landmark icons present on map segments was manipulated to determine the optimal range of landmark object-relations that can facilitate learning spatial knowledge of a complete region. Participants viewed a series of map segments showing a car being guided on a route with two, four, or six landmarks present on each segment, and then
Individual differences in cognitive map accuracy: Investigating the role of landmark familiarity
Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology / Revue canadienne de psychologie expérimentale, 2019
Broad individual differences exist in the ability to create a cognitive map of a new environment. The current studies investigated whether familiarizing participants with to-be-learned target landmarks (Experiment 1) or target landmarks plus the order they would be encountered along routes (Experiment 2) before exploring the Silcton virtual environment would increase performance on tasks assaying spatial memory of Silcton. Participants in both experiments were randomly assigned to be pre-exposed either to information about target landmarks in Silcton or control landmarks on the university campus. In both experiments, participants explored Silcton via four prescribed routes and then performed a direction estimation task and a map building task based on memory for the locations of the target landmarks. In addition, participants completed the Spatial Orientation Test of perspective-taking. Pre-exposure to Silcton landmarks versus control landmarks did not affect scores on Silcton-based tasks in either experiment. Some sex differences in direction estimation were observed in Experiment 1 but not Experiment 2. While facilitating familiarity with landmarks did not improve cognitive map accuracy, both sex and perspective taking ability were found to contribute to individual differences in the ability to create a cognitive map. Public Significance Statement Individual differences in the ability to create a mental map of a novel environment have been demonstrated in the laboratory, but their origins are not well understood. It is possible that familiarizing individuals with the buildings and the routes in a new environment before they experience it may help them form a mental map. Such pretraining did not facilitate the accuracy of mental representations, and it seems likely that variation in spatial visualization abilities is a larger contributor to individual differences in mental map accuracy.
The effect of landmark and body-based sensory information on route knowledge
Memory & Cognition, 2011
The effect of landmark and body-based sensory information on route knowledge Ruddle, R. A., Volkova, E., Mohler, B., & Buelthoff, H. H. (2011). The effect of landmark and body-based sensory information on route knowledge. Memory & Cognition, 39, 686-699. DOI=10.3758/s13421-010-0054-z. Abstract Two experiments investigated the effect of landmarks and body-based information on route knowledge. Participants made four out-and-back journeys along a route, guided on the first outward trip, and with feedback every time an error was made. Experiment 1 used three-dimensional virtual environments (VEs) with a desktop monitor display, and participants were provided with no supplementary landmarks, global landmarks, local landmarks, or global & local landmarks. Local landmarks significantly reduced the number of errors that participants made, but global landmarks did not.
Acquisition of landmark, route, and survey knowledge in a wayfinding task: in stages or in parallel?
Psychological Research, 2020
According to an influential concept, humans acquire spatial knowledge about their environment in three distinct stages: landmark knowledge is acquired first, then route knowledge, and finally survey knowledge. The stage concept has been challenged by studies which observed that in a wayfinding paradigm, route, and survey knowledge emerge at the same time and; therefore, were seemingly acquired in parallel. However, this experimental evidence is not conclusive because the above studies suffered from a ceiling effect. The present study was designed to overcome the ceiling effect by increasing the complexity of the wayfinding task. We asked 60 young participants to find their way through an urban environment rendered in virtual reality, and assessed their landmark, route, and survey knowledge after each of ten trials. We found that all three types of knowledge gradually increased from the first to the last trial. We further found that correlations between the three types of knowledge i...
Spatial Cognition & Computation, 2005
Successful wayfinding requires accurate encoding of two types of information: landmarks and the spatial relations between them (e.g. landmark X is left/north of Y). Although both types of information are crucial to wayfinding, behavioral and neurological evidence suggest that they have different substrates. In this paper, we consider the nature of the difference by examining comprehension times of spatial information (i.e. route and survey descriptions) and landmark descriptions. In two studies, participants learned simple environments by reading descriptions from route or survey perspectives, half with a single perspective switch. On half of the switch trials, a landmark description was introduced just prior to the perspective switch. In the first study, landmarks were embellished with descriptions of visual details, while in the second study, landmarks were embellished with descriptions of historic or other factual information. The presence of landmark descriptions did not increase the comprehension time of either route or survey descriptions, suggesting that landmark descriptions are perspective-neutral. Furthermore, visual landmark descriptions speeded comprehension time when the perspective was switched, whereas factual landmark descriptions had no effect on perspective switching costs. Taken together, the findings support separate processes for landmark and spatial information in construction of spatial mental models, and point to the importance of visual details of landmarks in facilitating mental model construction.
Turn-by-turn instructions of navigation systems do not fully correspond to the way in which people typically communicate spatial information to each other. Previous research demonstrated that the acquisition of survey knowledge from such instructions is challenging. In the present study we investigate whether it is possible to create wayfinding instructions that communicate survey information, without sacrificing the recall of route information. We explore whether the presentation of survey information can be easily mentally integrated with route information. To this end, we compared three different types of wayfinding instructions: turn-by-turn instructions , which include streets and metric distances; spatial chunking instructions which include local route information such as landmarks located at decision points and present instructions in cognitively logical chunks; and our orientation instructions, which combine local and global information of the route and integrate it within the environment's context. Instructions were presented in verbal and visual modes. Results showed that it is possible to improve the recall of survey information without sacrificing the recall of route-specific elements: visual orientation instructions resulted in significantly higher landmark recall rates, significantly higher quality sketch maps, and significantly more "survey-like" sketch map types. In the verbal mode, differences between orientation instructions and spatial chunking instructions were less clear, but the performance of both was better, compared to turn-by-turn instructions. These results contribute to the ongoing discussion on the potential reasons for the navigation systems' detrimental effect on spatial learning and demonstrate that people can learn both types of knowledge if the presentation style supports it. The overall amount of acquired knowledge could be improved through orientation instructions. Our study has practical implications for the future design of navigation systems.
Route directions are often given on request in situ, requiring the inquirer to remember the directions. Previous work has shown that landmarks are more memorable than street names. However, in those studies, the names of landmarks were more vivid and distinctive than the street names. In two experiments, we disentangled vividness/distinctiveness from landmark/street. The major factor in memorability of routes was vividness/distinctiveness, with a slight advantage to streets. Route directions were remembered better when either the landmarks, the street names or both were more vivid and distinctive. Those high in mental imagery read the descriptions faster and remembered them better. Thus, vividness in the stimuli and visual imagery in the mind augment constructing and remembering spatial mental models because forming spatial mental models relies in part on spatial structure but also on associative learning, and vividness and visual imagery promote associative learning. The findings have implications for learning in general.