The Effects Of Mobile Navigation On Spatial Knowledge Learning And Wayfinding Performance

With the rapid development of smart devices,more and more mobile navigation devices are used in people’s daily life and work,but not everyone can efficiently find their way with the help of mobile navigation devices.Previous studies have shown that mobile navigation devices have an impact on wayfinding performance and learning of spatial knowledge,but whether this impact is a positive promotion or a hindrance has not yet reached a unified conclusion.First of all,due to technical limitations and other reasons in previous research on mobile navigation,the conclusions drawn from some early studies may no longer be applicable to intelligent mobile navigation devices.Second,previous studies have more contrasted the differences in the impact of mobile navigation and paper maps on wayfinding,and have not further explored the impact of specific design factors of mobile navigation.In addition,less attention has been paid to individual differences,especially the spatial cognition style and wayfinding strategies that individuals show in their wayfinding,and most of the previous studies have used the scales rather than exploring through the level of behavioral tasks.This research will explore the influence of mobile navigation design factors and individual differences on spatial knowledge learning and wayfinding performance through experiments: Research 1 mainly includes two parts.First,we will test and verify that the spatial knowledge framework and improve the task model for measuring spatial knowledge learning in more complex virtual environments.In addition,we experimentally examine the effects of navigation mode and navigation presentation range in mobile navigation design factors on individual wayfinding performance and spatial knowledge learning.On the basis of exploring the factors of mobile navigation in study 1,in study 2,we focused on the influence of individual differences in the process of wayfinding,and explored the differences in cognitive styles and wayfinding strategies of individuals in the process of wayfinding through behavioral tasks.The research results show that: 1)The spatial knowledge framework includes three types of knowledge: landmark/route/survey.Landmark recognition task and landmark steering task are used to measure landmark knowledge,route drawing task,route sequence task and angle task are used to measure route knowledge,and route integration task is used to measure survey knowledge;2)Regarding the influence of mobile navigation design factors on spatial knowledge learning,we found that the learning of landmark knowledge is not affected by gender,navigation mode or navigation presentation range;there is an interaction between gender and navigation mode in the learning of route knowledge,boys are good at using fixed mode because boys have better spatial information processing ability.There is an interaction between the navigation mode and the navigation presentation range in the learning of route knowledge.On a navigation map with a small presentation range,it is more beneficial to use rotation mode to learn route knowledge;3)The influence of mobile navigation design factors on the wayfinding performance is shown in the main effect of navigation mode and gender on the wayfinding performance.The wayfinding performance is higher in the rotation mode,and the wayfinding performance of men is higher than that of women.In addition,there is an interaction of navigation mode,scale and gender.In the large-scale navigation map mode,men use fixed maps to find better performance;4)In the exploration of individual differences,we found that individuals who are good at using route style strategies can better learn route knowledge,which is beneficial to improve their wayfinding performance;individuals who are good at using survey style strategies can reduce the number of wayfinding errors and improve wayfinding performance.This study verifies the spatial knowledge framework and forms a set of stable and reliable spatial knowledge measurement models,updates the impact of mobile navigation design factors on wayfinding performance and spatial knowledge learning,and objectively reveals the differences in individual spatial cognition styles in the process of wayfinding,and also provides a reference for mobile navigation design.