To Örebro University

Spatial (memory) update strategies depend on situational factors, such as availability of external information, familiarity with the environment, and cognitive demand. Of key interest to this research is the multimodal integration of environmental and individual characteristics in visuospatial update and reorientation in situations of extensive (embodied) rotational locomotion in naturalistic conditions. We investigate active visuo-locomotive experience and reorientation performance in everyday navigation in natural urban settings.

We examine navigation and update strategy adaptation in relation to familiarity, the difficulty of the task (as articulated via a ``rotation metric´´), and available external visuospatial cues. In two behavioral studies in large-scale built environments, two healthcare facilities and a train station, 45 participants (aged 18-83) performed a navigation task under natural conditions. A multimodal analysis of visuolocomotive behavior was conducted including eye-tracking, video analyses, sketch-mapping task, orientation pointing task, and post-questionnaires.

In the first study conducted in two healthcare facilities, namely the Old and New Parkland hospitals in Dallas (USA), 25 participants were asked to find their way in an unfamiliar environment. We focused on an average of 2 events of confusion or disorientation per participant throughout the route. The environmental analysis of the path reveals correlations between the disorientation events and the visuospatial characteristics of the path at key locations and decision points. Three key results were reported after the combination of the behavioral and the environmental analysis: (1) visual accessibility at key locations (e.g., intersection, entrance hall, atrium lobby) of the path towards manifest cues (e.g. signages, landmarks) and environmental cues (e.g. geometry, symmetry) is critical for better navigation performance and reduced numbers of confusion events, (2) narrow enclosed spaces have a negative impact on navigation experience, (3) extensive ego-rotations, defined as rotation metric of the path, influence orientation performance.

In the second study, we further explore the impact of rotations in navigation performance, and the reorientation strategies used actively during the navigation task at a train station in Bremen (Germany); the task is a part of a typical everyday commuting scenario. More than 60% of the participants experience a confusing event, especially while performing 360-degree ego-rotation. The multimodal analysis also suggests that the level of familiarity is related to the choice of navigation-aids used for reorientation (between environmental cues, and manifest cues) and the timing where these strategies were adopted. Results suggest that familiar navigators rely on environmental cues and exhibit proactive decision-making, whereas unfamiliar ones rely on manifest cues, are late in decision-making, and show no sign of sensorimotor spatial update. Moreover, the visual attention analysis shows that the direction of movement affected the gaze close to the decision points, and the extent of rotation negatively affected the spatial update performance.

Active locomotion where a full-range of combined perceptual and cognitive processes are involved suggests that subjects do not demonstrate spatial updating strategies based on spatial representations, instead explicitly relying on external visuospatial cues. However, the extent of rotational locomotion, the visual accessibility to navigation-aid cues (e.g. signage, landmarks), and the level of familiarity play a fundamental role in the choice of the updating strategies people use for effective reorientation. Next steps of our research involve embodied navigation behavioral studies in virtual environments (VR) where the conditions of the rotation angle tested and the positioning of cues can be systematically manipulated to provide a metric for the extent of which they influence navigation performance.