Strategies of Orientation in Environmental Spaces Inaugural - Dissertation zur

This study examines the working memory systems involved in humanwayfinding. In the learning phase 24 participants learned two routes in a novelphotorealistic virtual environment displayed on a 220° screen, while they weredisrupted by a visual, a spatial, a verbal or ‐ in a control group ‐ no secondarytask. In the following wayfinding phase the participants had to find and to“virtually walk” the two routes again. During this wayfinding phase a number ofdependent measures were recorded. We show that encoding wayfindingknowledge interfered with the verbal and with the spatial secondary task. Theseinterferences were even stronger than the interference of wayfinding knowledgewith the visual secondary task. These findings are consistent with a dual codingapproach of wayfinding knowledge