Lingwood, J., Blades, M., Farran, E.K. et al. (2 more authors) (2015) The development of wayfinding abilities in children: Learning routes with and without landmarks. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 41. pp. 74-80. ISSN 0272-4944
Abstract
Young children experience wayfinding difficulties. A better understanding of the development of wayfinding abilities may inform strategies that can be used to improve these skills in children. The ability to learn and remember a route was assessed in 220 6-, 8-, and 10-year old children and adults. Participants were shown a route in a virtual environment, before they were asked to retrace this route until they had achieved two consecutive trials without error. The virtual environment contained (i) no landmarks (ii) landmarks or (iii) landmarks that were verbally labelled. Adults, 10-year-olds and most 8-year-olds learnt the route when landmarks were present, but not all the 6-year-olds were successful. All age groups of children improved when the landmarks were labelled. Children were much poorer when there were no landmarks. This is the first study to distinguish between route learning dependent on landmarks, and route learning without landmarks (i.e. dependent on directions).
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | Copyright © 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/) |
Keywords: | Wayfinding; Route learning; Landmarks; Virtual environments |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Science (Sheffield) > Department of Psychology (Sheffield) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number ECONOMIC & SOCIAL RESEARCH COUNCIL RES-062-0005 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 01 Mar 2016 16:11 |
Last Modified: | 01 Mar 2016 16:11 |
Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2014.11.008 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Elsevier |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1016/j.jenvp.2014.11.008 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:95750 |