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Spatial Cognition

Biennial Conference of the German Society for Cognitive Science

Spatial Cognition 2016, KogWis 2016: Spatial Cognition X pp 55–68Cite as

Are Wayfinding Self-efficacy and Pleasure in Exploring Related to Shortcut Finding? A Study in a Virtual Environment

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 10523))

Abstract

The analysis of individual factors supporting wayfinding ability is attracting increasing interest in the spatial cognition domain. The present study aimed to investigate whether two variables, wayfinding self-efficacy and pleasure in exploring, relate to shortcut-finding performance. A group of 124 university students were led along a route through one of two virtual environments that differed only in that one contained landmarks, while the other did not. Then they were asked to find a shortcut from the start to the end of the route they had learned. Two questionnaires were also administered to assess their wayfinding self-efficacy and pleasure in exploring. The results showed a better performance in the shortcut task for the environment containing landmarks. Individual differences correlated with shortcut-finding ability, but their predictive power was stronger in the without- than in the with-landmarks condition. The authors concluded that individual variables, such as wayfinding self-efficacy and a positive attitude to exploring, interact with environmental features (landmark availability) and relate to wayfinding performance.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of General Psychology, University of Padova, Padua, Italy

    Francesca Pazzaglia, Chiara Meneghetti & Enia Labate

  2. Department of Philosophy, Sociology, Pedagogy, and Applied Psychology, University of Padova, Padua, Italy

    Lucia Ronconi

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  1. Francesca Pazzaglia
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  2. Chiara Meneghetti
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  3. Enia Labate
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  4. Lucia Ronconi
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Correspondence to Francesca Pazzaglia .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany

    Thomas Barkowsky

  2. Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts, USA

    Heather Burte

  3. ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Christoph Hölscher

  4. University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany

    Holger Schultheis

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Pazzaglia, F., Meneghetti, C., Labate, E., Ronconi, L. (2017). Are Wayfinding Self-efficacy and Pleasure in Exploring Related to Shortcut Finding? A Study in a Virtual Environment. In: Barkowsky, T., Burte, H., Hölscher, C., Schultheis, H. (eds) Spatial Cognition X. Spatial Cognition KogWis 2016 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10523. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68189-4_4

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