No abstract

The study reported here investigated the effects of conditions expected to favour conciseness in the production of route directions. In Experiment 1, two groups of undergraduates were invited to give written descriptions of the route connecting two well-known places on their university campus. The control group received standard instructions, and the other group was instructed to produce route directions that were as concise as possible, while remaining sufficiently informative to guide a pedestrian to the goal. Not surprisingly, instructions to be concise resulted in an overall shortening of descriptions, but this occurred in a selective manner. In particular, actions and action-landmark combinations were the least affected, whereas the number of landmarks mentioned without being associated with actions, as well as of details describing landmarks, was considerably reduced. Furthermore, landmarks situated at points on the route involving a decision about changing direction underwent less reduction than other landmarks. In Experiment 2, conditions were created where conciseness was brought into play without any explicit instructions to be concise. Undergraduates were asked to work in groups of three, and each group was assigned the task of producing a single description. The results showed that the descriptions produced by a group were shorter than those produced by individuals. This was interpreted as reflecting that in the absence of any conciseness instructions, the feedback developed within groups during the production of route directions led to effective selection of the information content. Interestingly, the items relating actions and landmarks were almost fully preserved in the group descriptions. In Experiment 3, conciseness was shown to be further increased by combining instructions for conciseness and group production. Altogether, the three experiments revealed the primary role of propositions linking action prescriptions and landmarks at points on the route where key actions have to be taken.