An Analysis of Direction and Motion Concepts in Verbal Descriptions of Route Choices

This paper reports on a study analyzing verbal descriptions of route choices collected in the context of two in situ experiments in the cities of Salzburg and Vienna. In the study 7151 propositions from 20 participants describing route choices along four routes directly at decision points (100 decision points in total) are classified and compared to existing studies. Direction and motion concepts are extracted, semantically grouped and ranked by their overall occurrence frequency. A cross-classification of direction and motion concepts exposes frequently used combinations. The paper contributes to a more detailed understanding of situational spatial discourse (primarily in German) by participants being unfamiliar with a way-finding environment. Results contribute to cognitively-motivated spatial decision support systems, especially in the context of pedestrian navigation.

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