Abstract:
Navigation is essential to life, and it is cognitively complex, drawing on abilities such as prospective and situated planning, spatial memory, location recognition, and real-time decision-making. In many cases, day-to-day navigation is embedded in a social context where cognition and behavior are shaped by others, but the great majority of existing research in spatial cognition has focused on individuals. The two studies we report here contribute to our understanding of social wayfinding, assessing the performance of paired and individual navigators on a real-world wayfinding task in which they were instructed to minimize time and distance traveled. In the first study, we recruited 30 pairs of friends (familiar dyads); in the second, we recruited 30 solo participants (individuals). We compare the two studies to the results of an earlier study of 30 pairs of strangers (unfamiliar dyads). We draw out differences in performance with respect to spatial, social, and cognitive considerations. Of the three conditions, solo participants were least successful in reaching the destination accurately on their initial attempt. Friends traveled more efficiently than either strangers or individuals. Working with a partner also appeared to lend confidence to wayfinders: dyads of either familiarity type were more persistent than individuals in the navigation task, even after encountering challenges or making incorrect attempts. Route selection was additionally impacted by route complexity and unfamiliarity with the study area. Navigators explicitly used ease of remembering as a planning criterion, and the resulting differences in route complexity likely influenced success during enacted navigation.
摘要:
导航对生活至关重要,它在认知上很复杂,利用前瞻性和定位规划等能力,空间记忆,位置识别,和实时决策。在许多情况下,日常导航嵌入在认知和行为由他人塑造的社会环境中,但是空间认知的现有研究大多集中在个体上。我们在这里报告的两项研究有助于我们对社会寻路的理解,评估配对和个人导航员在现实世界中的寻路任务中的性能,在该任务中,他们被指示以最大程度地减少行进的时间和距离。在第一项研究中,我们招募了30对朋友(熟悉的二元组);在第二个,我们招募了30名单独参与者(个人)。我们将这两项研究与早期对30对陌生人(不熟悉的二元组)的研究结果进行了比较。我们得出了在空间方面的表现差异,社会,和认知方面的考虑。在这三个条件中,独奏参与者在最初的尝试中最不成功地准确到达目的地。朋友旅行比陌生人或个人更有效。与合作伙伴的合作似乎也给寻路者带来了信心:在导航任务中,熟悉类型的二元组比个人更持久,即使遇到挑战或做出不正确的尝试。路线选择还受到路线复杂性和对研究区域不熟悉的影响。航海家明确使用易于记忆作为规划标准,以及由此产生的路线复杂性差异可能会影响已颁布的导航过程中的成功。