Florian Röser

The structural salience of landmarks: results from an on-line study and a virtual environment experiment

The term ‘structural salience’ refers to the characteristics of landmarks that are immediately related to navigation. One of the central aspects of this kind of salience is where a landmark is located at an intersection. Klippel and Winter (2005) developed a mathematical measure that describes the ideal position of a landmark at an intersection. In the first experiment (on-line study) we examined the four different landmark positions from a birds-eye perspective and in the second experiment (virtual environment) from an egocentric perspective. We compare our results with Klippel and Winters model and provide some evidence to support their assumptions empirically.

The Giessen virtual environment laboratory: human wayfinding and landmark salience

In our virtual environment laboratory, we focus on different topics in human spatial cognition with projects on landmark salience, route knowledge, and survey knowledge. Within this laboratory note, we provide an overview of previous, current, and future work with our virtual environment Squareland.

Belief revision and way-finding

Belief revision is required when veridical information surfaces that contradicts what was previously thought to be the case. In way-finding, belief revision frequently occurs, for example, when the travelled route has led one astray, instead of to one’s chosen destination. In past cognitive research, the topics of belief revision and way-finding have been treated in isolation. Here, we introduce an approach for linking the two fields and assess belief revision as it occurs in the process of way-finding. We report the results of two experiments that put participants in (virtual) situations where elements of a previously learned route description do not match the actual environment (thereby requiring the revision of a previously held belief). Experiment 1 puts participants in a highly artificial virtual environment where the landmarks to be used in navigation have a low degree of semantic salience (houses of various color). Experiment 2 puts subjects in a photorealistic environment where the objects to be used in navigation are well-known landmarks (such as the Eiffel Tower) and thus have a high degree of semantic salience. In both experiments, participants are confronted with T-junctions, where a landmark that was expected to indicate the correct route is discovered to be in an unexpected location. The results of the experiments show that a participant’s choice of route, in such cases, is affected by differences in the structure of the relevant initial instruction. More precisely, the route chosen by participants is affected by whether the relevant landmark was described as being on the same side of the path as they were instructed to turn (congruent case) or as located on the opposite side of the path as they were instructed to turn (incongruent case).

Der Weg als Ziel Virtuelle Umgebungen und räumlicher Wissenserwerb

Ein Leben ohne Computer, Internet und virtuellen Realitaten ist heute nur noch schwer vorstellbar. Mobiltelefone und Navigationsgerate gehoren zur Standardausrustung jedes Menschen, und wir machen uns von der modernen Technik zunehmend abhangig. Dennoch ist es dem Menschen noch nicht gelungen, etwas Komplexeres oder gar Leistungsfahigeres zu erschaffen, als das menschliche Gehirn. Wenn unser Gehirn aber doch so leistungsfahig ist und sich unter anderem vor dem evolutionaren Hintergrund des standigen Navigieren-Mussens entwickelt hat: Wieso vertrauen wir mittlerweile so haufig auf die Leistung von Navigationssystemen? Externe Medien wie Navigationssysteme konnen uns nicht das Denken bzw. Navigieren komplett abnehmen, sondern es nur auf bestimmte Weise erganzen.

Turn left where you felt unhappy: how affect influences landmark-based wayfinding

The present work investigated the impact of affect in landmark-based wayfinding. We assumed that affect-laden landmarks improve wayfinding performance and have an impact on later landmark recognition. To investigate our hypotheses, we ran two experiments in a virtual maze. In Experiment 1, we investigated how affect-laden landmarks influence wayfinding and recognition in comparison with neutral landmarks. The aim of Experiment 2 was to focus on the affective valence of a landmark. The memory tasks of both experiments were repeated after 1 week in order to assess memory consolidation. Results showed that the best wayfinding and recognition performance occurs when negatively laden landmarks were used. In comparison with neutral and positively laden landmarks, recognition performance hardly decreased over time for the negatively laden landmarks. Our results not only support findings in the field of emotion research but also expand the concept of semantic landmark salience with respect to emotional responses.

Finding the Return Path: Landmark Position Effects and the Influence of Perspective

Much research has been done on how people find their way from one place to another. Compared to that, there is less research available on how people find back from the destination to their origin. We first present theoretical approaches to perceptual and cognitive processes involved in finding a return path, including concepts, such as visibility, structural salience, and allocentric versus egocentric perspective, followed by a series of three experiments. In these experiments, we presented subjects intersections that contained landmark information on different positions. In order to investigate the processes involved, we used different measures, such as route-continuation (in learning direction and in opposite direction) and free-recall of route information. In summary, the results demonstrate the importance of landmark positions at intersections (structural salience in combination with perspective) and that finding the return path is more difficult than reproducing the same route from the learning condition. All findings will be discussed with respect to the current research literature on landmark-based wayfinding.