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Wayfinding in Real Cities: Experiments at Street Corners

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Spatial Cognition VIII (Spatial Cognition 2012)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 7463))

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Abstract

Experimental evidence sheds new light on the role of spatial geometry for wayfinding in real urban environments. Eye-tracking is used in a desktop-based experiment to study where people look during wayfinding decisions when let to look freely or asked to find a taxi rank. Gaze patterns from these two tasks are compared with a subsequent recall task and analyzed in light of the topology of the street grid. Results show that decisions strongly favor more connected streets, and that fixation patterns respond to the spatial geometry of the stimuli in both the spatial decision-making and recall tasks. Controls single out the impacts of lighting and affordances in both the behavioral responses and gaze bias patterns; the presence of people and traffic serve as particularly strong attractors. The paper highlights the role of spatial geometry for individual spatial decision-making in real urban environments.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Bartlett School of Graduate Studies, UCL, UK

    Beatrix Emo

Authors
  1. Beatrix Emo
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Computer Science, Albert-Ludwigs-University, Georges-Koehler-Allee 79, 79110, Freiburg, Germany

    Cyrill Stachniss

  2. Cognitive Neuroinformatics, University of Bremen, Enrique-Schmidt-Str. 5, 28359, Bremen, Germany

    Kerstin Schill

  3. Department of Psychology and School of Education and Social Policy, Northwestern University, 2029 Sheridan Road, 60208-2710, Evanston, IL, USA

    David Uttal

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Emo, B. (2012). Wayfinding in Real Cities: Experiments at Street Corners. In: Stachniss, C., Schill, K., Uttal, D. (eds) Spatial Cognition VIII. Spatial Cognition 2012. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 7463. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-32732-2_30

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-32732-2_30

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-32731-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-32732-2

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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