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Wayfinding tasks
Wayfinding means
Travel to familiar destination
Exploratory travel Travel to novel destinations
Oriented search x x x
Following a trail x x x
Piloting x x x
Path integration x x
Habitual locomotion x Referring to a
cognitive map x x x
Table 3. The possible utility of proposed wayfinding methods for various wayfinding tasks (Allen, 1999).
3.2 COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF WAYFINDING Cognitive Maps
People make wayfinding decisions based on a previously acquired spatial understanding of their world; this spatial representation of the environment is called a cognitive map. This term was originally introduced by Tolman (1948), and it refers to the mental representation of spatial relationships between essential objects (landmarks, locations, etc.) in human environments and the possible connections between these objects (Golledge et al., 2000). Humans develop these maps to answer questions such as:
Where am I located? Where is my home? Where is my destination? Which route do I select to reach my destination? How will I know when I am lost (Boswell, 2001)? These questions are the basis of wayfinding, and they are also the reason we form cognitive maps (Golledge, 1999). In optimal situations, a cognitive map offers the possibility of locating the position of a specific destination and enables the wayfinder to find (or plan a route to) this destination (Ellard, 2009). Therefore, cognitive maps are “the internal representation of experienced external environments, including the spatial relations among features and objects” (Colledge, 1999), and cognitive mapping is the process of “encoding, storing and manipulating experienced geo-referenced information” (Colledge, 1999). It is still unknown how humans conduct this mapping, and it is an active topic of research within the field of neuropsychology and related fields. For example, Kitchen and Blades (2002) have integrated cognitive theories from geography and
psychology to enable a better understanding of environment-behavior interactions and cognitive maps.
For humans to travel, two active processes are required to facilitate spatial knowledge acquisition:
a) Person-to-object relations, or the so-called egocentric referencing that changes as movement takes place, and
b) Object-to-object relations, or the so-called anchoring structure of a cognitive map, which remains stable during a person’s movement (Sholl, 1996).
In real-life scenarios, a traveler can become disoriented because of poor person-to-object comprehension. In these situations, the traveler can still understand the basic structure of the environment in which he or she is moving. Errors in the encoding of object-to-object relations may lead to scenarios in which the wayfinder misspecifies the anchor point’s geometry.
These scenarios often produce the distortions and fragmentations found in spatial products like maps (Golledge et al., 2000).
A knowledge of human wayfinding can be divided into three general categories (Golledge et al., 2000):
a) Route learning, in which the traveler navigates a novel environment and tries to find his or her way around,
b) Route knowledge acquisition, in which travelers understand their location along the route in a larger frame of reference, and
c) Survey knowledge acquisition, which is the highest level of spatial knowledge, including spatial layouts and information such as locations, orientations, and distances between objects along the route.
This information can then can be linked to a network that can act as a frame of reference for environmental knowledge (Colledge, 1999).
Humans usually rely heavily on their visual, sensory-motor, and proprioceptive senses instead of using instruments or mapped representations when building a representation of their surroundings.
Therefore, humans’ environmental knowledge is mostly obtained during their movement through the environment (MacEachren, 1992). However, human senses are not reliable, and spatial representations are often incomplete. This can produce distortions or fragmentations in spatial awareness and lead to errors in wayfinding tasks.
Spatial Abilities
Imagine a scenario in which two of friends visit another for a week and take several trips around town. After their journey, one friend might have acquired a detailed knowledge of the town, while another friend may only remember the name of their hotel. Montello (1998) has pointed out that even
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with equal levels of exposure, the spatial knowledge of two individuals may differ greatly. The ability to remember and recall environmental knowledge varies between individuals (see, e.g., Ishikawa and Montello, 2006), and the nature of this knowledge also varies. Evidence also supports the presence of individual changes in the development of the ability to learn route and survey knowledge (Piaget and Inhelder, 1967). This ability differs between age groups. For example, Pellegrino et al. (1990) observed large differences in spatial learning between pre-teen, teenaged, and adult participants. Part of this can be explained by the better understanding of spatial layouts and configurational structures in adults (Bell, 2000).
Spatial abilities can be grouped based on their function, that is, the situations in which they are used or based on their purpose. Allen (1999) stated that the most used and recognized of these abilities are the following:
a) Visualization, or “the ability to imagine or anticipate the appearance of complex figures or objects after a prescribed transformation”
(Lohman, 1988),
b) Speeded rotation, or the ability to determine whether one object is a rotated version of another, and
c) Spatial orientation, the ability of “an observer to anticipate the appearance of an object or object array from a prescribed perspective”
(Allen, 1999).
There are several methods for evaluating these spatial abilities. More traditional samples can be found in Ekstrom et al. (1976); Ekstrom, French, and Harman (1979) provided information about the development of these samples.
Allen (1999) and Golledge et al. (2000) placed spatial abilities into three distinct categories:
a) A stationary individual and manipulable objects,
b) A stationary or mobile individual and moving objects, and c) A mobile individual and stationary objects.
Out of these three categories, the last is most related to the process of wayfinding, that is, a traveler is moving in large-scale environments consisting of both mobile and stationary objects. Thus, spatial abilities play a critical role in human wayfinding, including the construction and use of cognitive maps.
Spatial Knowledge
When the human mind is constructing a spatial representation of the surrounding environment, it contains a collection of geographic features.
Lynch (1960) divided these features into four distinct categories: paths, districts, edges, landmarks, and nodes. All these features have coordinates,
distances among them, and all the other knowledge required for orientating oneself in the environment. This spatial representation aids travelers in locating and moving themselves within an environment and prevents them from getting lost (Siegel and White, 1975). Spatial knowledge is usually gained through the exploration of an environment, but it can also be gained from indirect sources, such as spoken instructions and maps (Burnett and Lee, 2005).
Thorndyke (1981) divided spatial knowledge into three categories:
a) Landmark knowledge: knowledge of salient features or objects in the environment
b) Procedural knowledge: knowledge of route representation, that is, the sequences that connect locations or segments in the environment c) Survey knowledge: knowledge about the global organization of
features and the relationship between routes
It has been suggested by several studies that a traveler’s knowledge increases sequentially, meaning that spatial knowledge progresses first from landmark knowledge to procedural and finally to survey knowledge with increased familiarity with the environment (Thorndyke, 1981). Based on Siegel and White (1975), landmarks and routes are necessary and sufficient elements for wayfinding to occur.