LANDMARK ENHANCEMENT AND STRATEGIC PROCESSING - AN EVALUATION OF STRATEGIES FOR SPATIAL NAVIGATION TRAINING

Viewing a filmed route offers an alternative to more expensive and rig id methods of learning navigation skills. One advantage of film is the ability to enhance important landmarks or focus on particularly relev ant information. The current research used a videotape of a spatial ro ute to assess the usefulness of participants' interaction with landmar ks and enhancement of landmarks for training spatial navigation. 48 pa rticipants were exposed to one of four videotaped route conditions: La ndmark-enhanced, Question-based Interaction, Landmark-enhanced Plus Qu estion-based Interaction, or Control (Nonenhanced without Question-bas ed Interaction). Following the spatial navigation training with videot ape, participants were asked to traverse the route in the actual build ing. Analyses of variance indicated that the Question-based Interactio n group made significantly fewer wrong turns during traversal of the r oute than did the Control group. Also, enhancement of the landmarks di d not significantly reduce wrong turns; in fact, it may have hindered the benefit of question-based interaction in reducing wrong turns.