Strategies for Orientation: The Role of 3D Landmark Salience and Map Alignment

An experiment and eye movement study investigated the strategies people use to orientate themselves in urban settings using a streetmap. Previous studies have suggested that the preferred strategy involves choosing salient landmarks to match between the scene and the map. We presented stimuli for which single-landmark matching was not the optimal strategy; the only unambiguous information available for matching was the map’s 2D geometry which could also be abstracted from the scene. However, most participants still chose a landmark-based strategy. We discuss the implications for cognitive models, for understanding individual differences, and for potentially improving map designs to aid orientation.