EXAMINING THE ROLE OF COGNITIVE MAPS AND FAMILIARITY IN WAYFINDING OVER TIME

EXAMINING THE ROLE OF COGNITIVE MAPS AND FAMILIARITY IN WAYFINDING OVER TIME

Hedayati, M., Falana, A., Bahm, C. R., Domingo, T., Hampton, N., & Maurat, R. (2017). Examining the Role of Cognitive Maps and Familiarity in Wayfinding Over Time. In iConference 2017 Proceedings (pp. 781-785). https://doi.org/10.9776/17340

Research Advisor: Cristina Robles Bahm, Information Technology, La Roche College

This project presents preliminary results on the examination of cognitive maps and familiarity in terms of wayfinding. A user study is presented where 22 participants gae 11 verbal wayfinding descriptions from several landmarks at the University of Pittsburgh. The general premise being that participants who had been at the university for more years would produce different wayfinding descriptions, thus portraying different cognitive maps. The data was then analyzed in three ways, all taking into account the number of years the participant had been at the university. Preliminary results show that participants who had been at the university longer attempted more route descriptions and were more accurate in their descriptions. There was also a slight trend towards using more words in their route descriptions, although this was not statistically significant. Future work should focus on route descriptions using graphical modeling methods and a different premise to define familiarity.

Presented at iConference 2017