Acquisition of Landmark Knowledge from Static and Dynamic Presentation of Route Maps

This contribution reports on ongoing collaborative research at the University of Stanford, Department of Psychology, and the University of Hamburg, Department for Informatics. Extending the research on the effects of static vs. dynamic route presentation on perception and memory (Klippel et al., 2002), we examined different route presentation methods that are commonly used today (e.g. internet maps, GPS maps, etc.) and their effects on the subsequent route memory. Participants learned a route from a map of a fictitious town. The route was presented to them either as a solid line (i.e. static), a moving dot (dynamic), or a dot superimposed on a line (mixed). In a subsequent recall task, participants in all three conditions remembered equivalent number of landmarks, but participants in the dynamic condition recalled less pertinent landmarks than those in the static condition, who in turn recalled less than participants in the mixed condition. The results highlight the importance of landmarks at decision points and hint at differences in mental processing of dynamically and statically presented spatial information.