Path choice heuristics for navigation related to mental representations of a building

The paper investigates mental representations and path choice strategies in a multi-level building. Wayfinding tasks were conducted in a vertical grid-like setting. Path choice options were equal with respect to distance, time and complexity. A structure mapping task is introduced in order to analyze the structure of participants’ mental representation of the building. It showed that participants spontaneously divided the building into regions that were inherent to the structure of the building. This representation was the basis for a hierarchical planning process. Trajectory choice was directly related to the representation of the building. Participants’ movement patterns and the structure of their representations indicate that they followed a regionalization strategy that has also been observed in an earlier study (Hölscher et al., 2006b).

[1]  Reginald G. Golledge,et al.  Path Selection and Route Preference in Human Navigation: A Progress Report , 1995, COSIT.

[2]  J. Bortz,et al.  Kurzgefasste Statistik fur die klinische Forschung: Ein Praktischer Leitfaden fur die Analyse kleiner Stichproben. , 1998 .

[3]  Hartwig H. Hochmair,et al.  Investigation of Preference Between the Least-Angle Strategy and the Initial Segment Strategy for Route Selection in Unknown Environments , 2004, Spatial Cognition.

[4]  David Kortenkamp,et al.  Prototypes, Location, and Associative Networks (PLAN): Towards a Unified Theory of Cognitive Mapping , 1995, Cogn. Sci..

[5]  R. Dalton.  The Secret Is To Follow Your Nose , 2001 .

[6]  Christoph Hölscher,et al.  Map Use and Wayfinding Strategies in a Multi-building Ensemble , 2006, Spatial Cognition.

[7]  Markus Knauff,et al.  Up the down staircase : Wayfinding strategies in multi-level buildings , 2006 .

[8]  Hanspeter A. Mallot,et al.  Use and interaction of navigation strategies in regionalized environments , 2004 .

[9]  Ryuzo Ohno,et al.  Wayfinding in cases with verticak motion : Part 1 Recognition of direction and floor plan configuration , 1997 .

[10]  Romedi Passini,et al.  Wayfinding in Architecture , 1984 .

[11]  Albert C. Stevens,et al.  Distortions in judged spatial relations , 1978, Cognitive Psychology.

[12]  J. Fleiss.  Measuring nominal scale agreement among many raters. , 1971 .

[13]  N. Christenfeld.  Choices from Identical Options , 1995 .

[14]  R. Downs,et al.  Maps in minds : reflections on cognitive mapping , 1978 .

[15]  Andrew U. Frank,et al.  Influence of estimation errors on wayfinding-decisions in unknown street networks – analyzing the least-angle strategy , 2001, Spatial Cogn. Comput..

[16]  J N Bailenson,et al.  The initial segment strategy: A heuristic for route selection , 2000, Memory & cognition.