Integrating route knowledge in an unfamiliar neighborhood: Along and across route experiments

Abstract

This experiment was designed to examine how information obtained by learning two separate but partially overlapping routes in a relatively unfamiliar environment is integrated to provide locational, directional, and layout information about environmental features. The subject group was equally divided between adult males and females. A mixed land-use environment was chosen as the setting. The two partially overlapping routes were learned under uni- or bidirectional presentation conditions. Sequencing, distancing, and pointing tasks were used to access on-route and cross-route spatial knowledge. Various performance measures showed that when routes were learned bidirectionally performance was poorer. Results of cross-route pointing tasks indicated that integration of information had been achieved only marginally even though within-route sequence and distance information had been acquired at a reasonable level of proficiency. No gender differences were observed on any of the tasks. In general, the results raise a number of questions about the process of constructing representations of large-scale spaces and point out the difficulty effecting an integration of knowledge both within and across routes.