Wayfinding Strategy and Gender - Testing the Mediating Effects of Wayfinding Experience, Personality and Emotions

Trajectories across the healthy adult lifespan on sense of direction, spatial anxiety, and attitude in exploring places

Introduction

Self-evaluations about orientation and navigation in the environment contribute to individual differences in spatial cognition. Evidence suggests that they may change, even slightly, with the progression of adulthood. It is necessary to improve the framing of environment-related subjective self-evaluations in adulthood and aging by examining how they change and the factors related to them. Therefore, this study aimed to examine the developmental trajectories of sense of direction, spatial anxiety, and attitude in exploring place across the adult lifespan while also considering gender and education.

Materials and methods

A sample of 1,946 participants (1,068 women), aged 18-87 years, completed the sense of direction and spatial representation, spatial anxiety, and attitude in exploring scales.

Results

The regression models showed a linear increase in sense of direction with age, stable spatial anxiety until age 66 years when anxiety began increasing, and a stable attitude in exploring with a deflection by age 71 years. Gender played a role in all three types of self-evaluations, with men reporting higher ratings in sense of direction and attitude toward exploring (especially in older men), and lower levels of spatial anxiety than women did. Education also played a role, with higher education years associated with lower ratings in spatial anxiety and a higher sense of direction, nullifying gender differences in the latter.

Discussion

These results offer, in the spatial cognition framework, a better understanding of how specific environment-related self-evaluations develop with age and related factors, such as education. This underscores the importance of enhancing them, particularly in women and older adults.

On The 3D VR Simulated Rubik’s Cube Game for Smart Pads

In this study, interface designs of a VR 3D-simulated Rubik’s Cube game were developed and evaluated. A 2 × 2 × 2 mixed-design ANOVA was executed, with age (younger adult/older adult), interface (arrow/intuitive), and task complexity (easy, a single symmetrical task/difficult, a bio-symmetrical task) experimental design. The first three factors were between-subject designs while the latter was a within-subject design. The dependent variable was the percentage of the task performance and wayfinding questionnaire. The collected experimental data were analyzed by regression method to clarify the correlation among age, interface, task complexity, and wayfinding strategy. There were 96 subjects in the experiment, including 48 younger adults (aged from 18~22) and 48 older adults (aged from 60~85). The experimental results and statistical analysis showed that the task difficulty had a significant effect on task performance in the 3D VR Rubik’s Cube game. For the smart pad, the arrow interface was significantly more effective than the intuitive interface. The theoretical model regression analysis of the task complexity, interface, and wayfinding strategy was shown to be significant. Results showed that users may be affected either positively or negatively by the wayfinding strategy, as a higher score on familiarity indicates better VR game task performance, whereas for the usual spatial behavior wayfinding strategy, the opposite result was found for memory. These results can be used to assess VR game interface designs, taking into consideration age difference, task complexity, experiential self-report on 3D VR games, and including VR rotation navigational

Testing a Model of Human Spatial Navigation Attitudes towards Global Navigation Satellite Systems

Global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) can provide better data quality for different purposes; however, some age groups might lie outside its use. Understanding the barriers to its adoption is of interest in different fields. This work aims at developing a measurement instrument of the adoption attitudes towards this technology and examining the relationship of variables such as age and gender. A UTAUT model was tested on 350 participants. The main results can be summarised as follows: (i) the proposed GNSS scale on human spatial navigation attitudes towards geopositioning technology showed optimal psychometric properties; (ii) although statistically significant differences were found in the Wayfinding Questionnaire (WQ) between men and women, these did not reach the level of statistical significance for the scores on attitudes towards GNSS; (iii) by testing a model on human spatial navigation attitudes towards geopositioning technology, it was possible to show a higher relationship with age in women.

The Influence of Users' Spatial Familiarity on Their Emotional Perception of Space and Wayfinding Movement Patterns

In order to evaluate the sensory perceptions of users who visited a train station, this study aimed to conduct an evaluation of their spatial emotions and identify the distance and type of transfer. For evaluation and verification, emotional recognition and wayfinding types were analyzed according to types in the groups (gender, age, and spatial familiarity) of experimental participants. There were two research questions: “Will the length of movement patterns in the experiment environment vary depending on the types of the participant group?” and “Is there any moderating effect in the interaction between spatial familiarity and the types of the participant groups?” A total of 28 participants were recruited with consideration of gender, age, and familiarity with spatial experience, which were used to analyze the participant groups. The experiment was conducted at a train station, and a vignette was presented to the participants to record the route and pattern of their wayfinding, followed by providing a questionnaire to record their spatial perception. SPSS was used to conduct a T-test, factor analysis, and multidimensional scaling (MDS). The differences in spatial perception were arranged in visual positioning based on emotional vocabulary, and average movement distances in the participant groups were compared in accordance with the type of wayfinding and interaction effect by ANOVA. The results showed that there was a difference in spatial perception depending on the negative emotional vocabulary and type of participant. An emotional positioning map for average comparison was prepared for each participant group (gender, age, and spatial familiarity) by using the factors extracted in the factor analysis (emotional factor, management factor, and aesthetic factor). Female and unfamiliar groups displayed negative results in the emotional factor (F = 7.202, p < 0.05). In addition, male and familiar groups displayed negative results in the management factor (F = 3.058, p < 0.10). In wayfinding, there was an interaction between gender and the resident group based on the status of their spatial familiarity. Through this, it was possible to extract negative emotional evaluations according to the type of participant and the interaction factors for the type and length of the wayfinding.

Navigational Needs and Preferences of Hospital Patients and Visitors: What Prospects for Smart Technologies?

In this paper, we map navigational needs and preferences of patients and visitors to evaluate the appropriateness of a smartphone navigation application in the hospital in contrast to other, more traditional navigational cues. We test the effects of sociodemographic variables (age, gender, education) on wayfinding strategies and preferences of respondents (using chi2 tests). Empirical research is based on the survey among 928 patients/visitors of the Vítkovice Hospital in Ostrava, Czechia. We found a relatively weak association between gender and wayfinding—no major differences between men and women in navigational preferences were found. Age was the most important predictor of wayfinding. Respondents in the over-60-year age group were characteristic of a lower interest in changes of the navigational system and low willingness to use mobile applications for navigation—people between 41 years and 60 years were the biggest supporters of changes. Correspondingly, demand for improvement of navigation (including a mobile application) was positively correlated with educational level.