HOW WILL ROUTE GUIDANCE INFORMATION AFFECT COGNITIVE MAPS

This paper considers the effect of receiving a secondary source of inf ormation upon ability to acquire and use spatial knowledge (i.e. the f ormation of a cognitive map). Participants watch videos of three journ eys through an unfamiliar area. They then perform tasks measuring abil ity to integrate the routes into a cognitive map of the area. Subjects viewing the routes whilst hearing route guidance information performe d consistently worse than those receiving no guidance. The presence of non-salient information, however, did not impair performance. Existin g studies highlighting differences between gender and age groups regar ding spatial ability receive only partial support: the results suggest that ability to drive negates these effects. Female drivers perform a s well as, if not better than, their male counterparts, and outperform male non-drivers. This same 'driving' effect was also evident in the other-55s group, with both male and female drivers performing signific antly better than non-drivers in this age group. The results also show that driving ability enhances ability to cope with and use guidance i nformation, suggesting that systems' designers should make varying lev els of spatial information available for less experienced drivers.