The role of recipient perspective in giving and following wayfinding directions

Abstract

We examined how recipient perspective and descriptive features affect direction giving and following during wayfinding. In Experiment 1, participants provided directions from starting locations to destinations for fictional recipients driving through a town (route perspective) or looking at a map of the town (survey perspective). As expected, participants included left-right and landmarks more frequently when addressing a person driving in the town and cardinal descriptors more frequently when addressing a person looking at a map. In Experiment 2, participants rated the effectiveness of directions. Effective directions contained significantly more left-right references than did less effective directions. In Experiment 3, participants followed the best-and worst-rated directions. Unexpectedly, they navigated significantly faster when following the worst-rated directions. In Experiment 4, participants gave wayfinding directions for destinations in a familiar town. Again, direction features depended on recipient perspective, highlighting the dynamic nature of wayfinding processes.

The expressions of spatial relations during interaction in American Sign Language, Croatian Sign Language, and Turkish Sign Language

“…dressees are driving in the environment or looking at their maps (Hund et al 2008). The findings from the current study suggests that in signed language descriptions, when an addressee is present, the signers do not change their perspectives contra to what English speakers can do.…”

“…Hund et al (2008) studied whether the describers change their perspectives when giving directions to the addressees. They found that the describers use egocentric terms such as left-right and landmarks more frequently when the addressees driving in the town and use cardinal directions such as north-south more frequently when the addressees looking at a map.…”

The impact of culture and recipient perspective on direction giving in the service of wayfinding

“…Much of this research has focused on comparisons of Western and non-Western cultures. In contrast, US and European studies investigating flexibility of spatial descriptions and recipient perspectives largely have ignored cultural factors (e.g., Brunyé & Taylor, 2008;Hund, Haney, & Seanor, 2008;Noordzij & Postma, 2005;Pazzaglia, Meneghetti, DeBeni, & Gyselinck, 2010;Taylor & Tversky, 1992). As such, the primary goal of this investigation was to determine how culture and recipient perspective affect direction giving in the service of wayfinding.…”

Interactive cartographic route descriptions

“…The most suitable representation is a function of the information which requires representation. If one wishes to represent information regarding segments of the route which would be encountered during navigation, commonly referred to as a route perspective [24], a linguistic or augmented-reality representation is most suitable. On the other hand if one wishes to represent information regarding an overview of the environmental layout, commonly referred to as a survey perspective [24], a map or sketch representation is most suitable.…”

“…Dennis et al [14] found that linguistic descriptions which were clear, complete and containing an adequate number of landmarks, but without redundancy or uncertainty, were rated highly. Hund et al [24] asked individuals to state their individual preferences regarding linguistic descriptions. Individuals responded positively to landmark and left-right information and negatively to cardinal directions.…”