Gender and Age Differences in Using Indoor Maps for Wayfinding in Real Environments

Abstract

Users more easily become lost in complex indoor environments than in outdoor environments. Users with diverse backgrounds encounter different self-location, route memorization, and route following problems during wayfinding. This study intends to explore gender and age effects on the use of indoor maps for wayfinding in real environments. We used eye-tracking and retrospective verbal protocol methods to conduct a wayfinding experiment in a newly opened building. Statistical data were collected and three findings were obtained. Finding 1: Males had no significant differences with females in indoor self-location, route reading, and route following. However, males paid less visual attention to the landmark and legend than females during route reading. Finding 2: Age-related differences were significant in indoor wayfinding. Younger adults generally outperformed elderly adults in wayfinding in real indoor environments. Finding 3: Gender and age interactive effects were significant in self-location and route memorization. The mean differences of visual attention on the self-location map reading and route memorization between males and females increased with age.

Assessing Similarities and Differences between Males and Females in Visual Behaviors in Spatial Orientation Tasks

“…Lin [13] designed wayfinding tasks in a virtual environment and did not find conclusive evidence supporting the hypothesis that males perform better than females. Wang [14] also found no significant differences between males and females. Hegarty [15] found that males and females do not show differences in accuracy and reaction time.…”

Research on Generating an Indoor Landmark Salience Model for Self-Location and Spatial Orientation from Eye-Tracking Data

“…Mummidi and Krumm [20] calculated salience by comparing the number of times a specific n-gram appears in a cluster (term frequency) with the number of times the same n-gram appears in all clusters combined (document frequency). Wang [21] combined expert knowledge and proposed some definitions from cognitive and computational perspectives to evaluate indoor landmark salience. However, such methods are cumbersome and labor intensive.…”

“…Participants displayed a significant tendency to choose the path leg offering the longest line of sight during free exploration, but that trend did not occur in the chosen route group. Wang [21] reported that although males and females had similar levels of effectiveness and efficiency in self-location, route memorization, and route following, there was a significant difference between them in map reading and indoor wayfinding tasks. However, little research has measured the differences in landmark salience between the self-location and orientation tasks in indoor environments.…”

“…The use of eye-tracking data to generate a landmark salience model (visual, semantic and structural attractiveness) has not been tested. Researchers have applied the eye-tracking method to analyze semantic and spatial information [21,40]. For example, Raubal [7] proposed that city maps and street graphs are complemented with images and content databases, which could provide visual data as well as semantic and structural data.…”

Guest Editor’s Editorial “Cognitive Aspects of Human-Computer Interaction for GIS”

“…C. Wang et al [17] reflect "Gender and Age Differences in Using Indoor Maps for Wayfinding in Real Environments". This study intends to explore gender and age effects on the use of indoor maps for wayfinding in real environments.…”