| Wayfinding,defined as the skill of encoding and transforming spatial relationships in the environment for orientation and navigation.Two wayfinding strategies,route strategy and survey strategy,can be extracted from adults' memory representation of the spatial layout of daily physical environment.Route strategy,which mainly relies on landmarks and signs and refers to its own orientation to complete wayfinding navigation,is an egocentric strategy.Survey strategy,which relies on subject orientation and geospatial cues(such as the position of the sun),is an allocentric strategy.Spatial navigation refers to the ability of an individual to identify the current position in the environment and navigate to another unseen destination(Golledge,1999).By Screening and reviewing previous studies,the current study improved measurement tools,experimental paradigm and data analysis methods,and adopted a combination of quantitative research and qualitative research to explore the relationship between wayfinding strategy and spatial navigation as well as the influencing factors of wayfinding strategy by taking college students as the research object.This study consists of four sub-studies.In the pilot study part,the measurement tools used in this study are revised and the equivalence of measurement is tested.In Study 1,a questionnaire was used to investigate the relationship between wayfinding strategy and self-reported spatial navigation ability.Self-rated sense of direction and spatial anxiety were used as indicators of spatial navigation ability and emotional experience,and the moderating effects of wayfinding strategy on gender differences in sense of direction and spatial anxiety were investigated.Study 2,experiments were conducted to investigate the influence of wayfinding strategy on navigational performance in virtual environments.Navigation efficiency in route learning and retracing tasks and whether individuals could take shortcuts in the shortcut task were used as indicators to evaluate navigation performance.At the same time,the acquisition characteristics of three kinds of spatial information(landmark knowledge,route knowledge and survey knowledge)by participants with different wayfinding strategies in the virtual navigation process were collected to provide evidence for the "parallelism" of spatial information acquisition.Study 1 and Study 2 has established the relation of higher survey strategy score and higher self-rated sense of direction and lower spatial anxiety,and verify the buffering role on gender differences in the sense of direction and spatial anxiety.Since the survey strategy shows many advantages in a virtual environment over the route strategy,research switched into another research topic,namely the influence factors of wayfinding strategy.Study 3 focused on the influencing factors of pathfinding strategy.First through A preliminary study to determine the pathfinding strategy regional stereotype exists or not,and in Study 3A and Study 3B in 31provinces(autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the central government)within the scope of stratified sampling,through the method of questionnaire to collect data,describing different aspects such as gender,regional wayfinding strategy differences,by establishing a multivariate regression model,in which social demographic factors and growing environmental factors can predict wayfinding strategy type and two kinds of wayfinding strategy score;Study 3C focused on space activities during childhood experience and childhood wayfinding prediction and impact on the survey strategy,on the one hand will childhood experience and childhood wayfinding space activities into the regression model of the effect on the prediction of directional strategy,on the other hand to explore the childhood experience and childhood wayfinding space activities exist gender differences in survey strategy of a mediating effect.Then the individuals with higher survey strategy score were interviewed,and the environmental input factors and individual growth experience that might affect the survey strategy were explored in qualitative research.The research results are as follows:(1)The revised Wayfinding Strategy Scale,Sense of Direction Scale,Spatial Anxiety Scale and Spatial Activity Questionnaire have good reliability and validity,and can be used as effective tools to measure related spatial ability variables;The revised wayfinding strategy scale has cross-gender and cross-province measurement equivalence.(2)Individuals who prefer survey strategy had better self-rated sense of direction and lower level of spatial anxiety than those who prefer route strategy.Survey strategy played a moderating and buffering role in gender differences of sense of direction and spatial anxiety.(3)In a relatively complex virtual environment,the virtual navigation efficiency of individuals with survey strategy is higher than that of individuals with route strategy,and individuals with survey strategy are more likely to take shortcuts since the moment they can independently and correctly retrace learned routes.(4)During the virtual navigation process,both individuals preferring survey strategy and route strategy acquired three kinds of spatial information in parallel;(5)Based on the results of the national survey,we divided and determined the types of wayfinding strategies for different provinces in China;The gender and regional differences of wayfinding strategy are obvious,which shows that males prefer survey strategy more than females and northerners prefer survey strategy more than southerners.(6)Among many sociodemographic factors,gender and growth region(south/north)have a robust predictive effect on survey strategy;From the perspective of environmental input,childhood spatial activity experience and childhood wayfinding experience can positively predict survey strategy,and play a mediating role in the gender induced survey strategy score difference.Important others' language use,environment named landmarks and urban layout characteristics constitute the input factors to influence target policy environment,individual experience of wayfinding(especially active exploration experience),game activities,learn about visual space control subjects constitute the main body of the impact on orientation strategy growth experience.The following conclusions are drawn from this study:(1)Individuals who preferred survey strategy had higher self-rated spatial navigation ability;Survey strategy can also adjust and buffer the gender difference in spatial navigation as a moderator.(2)In the virtual navigation environment,in a relatively more complex route learning and retracing task and the shortcut task,the individuals who preferred survey strategy showed higher navigation efficiency,which was measured by the ability to retrace the routes with fewer times of learning,and the ability to reach the target through shortcuts on the basis of route learning;Survey strategy(rather than gender)was the primary factor affecting individual's performance on shortcuts;(3)Individuals with different wayfinding strategies prefer different spatial information in the navigation process,but the acquisition of spatial information is parallel;(4)Based on the national sample survey data,regional differences in wayfinding strategy(south/north)were found.Southerners prefer route strategy,while northerners prefer survey strategy.(5)Gender and growth region(south/north)have a robust predictive effect on wayfinding strategy;In addition,the environmental factors during the growth process,including the growth environment(rural area),childhood spatial activity experience,childhood wayfinding experience and other factors,can predict the occurrence and development of survey strategy,and play a mediating role in the gender difference of survey strategy score.Both the environmental input and the subject's growth experience affect the orientation strategy. |
PDF Full Text Request