The structural salience of landmarks: results from an on-line study and a virtual environment experiment

Gaze behavior during incidental and intentional navigation in an outdoor environment

“…This result may to some degree reflect that people are likely to look into the direction they are going. However, this finding is also in line with findings from lab-based studies that did not feature locomotion (Röser et al, 2011(Röser et al, , 2012, thus implying a higher structural salience of landmarks in turning direction independent of locomotion.…”

“…During incidental learning, their gaze pattern appears to be more affected by their direct line of sight, with landmarks at the most visible corner (i.e., in turning direction and after the turn) receiving the most fixation time. Taken together, these findings imply that the intention to learn a route leads to an increased focus on more structurally salient landmarks, which lends support to the conclusions of previous research (Lovelace et al, 1999;Michon & Denis, 2001;Röser et al, 2012).…”

“…These gaze patterns could be interpreted as follows: During intentional learning, participants focused on landmarks at the structurally most salient corner. During incidental learning, their gazes were more dependent on the overall visibility of landmarks at the different corners, with the corner in turning direction and after the turn remaining longer in the participants' field of view than all other corners in a prototypical scenario (see Röser et al, 2012). There was a second 3-way interaction of vertical axis, horizontal axis, and phase, with participants focusing more on landmarks in turning direction and before the turn during route retrieval as compared to route learning (illustrated in Figure 7).…”

“…Similarly, Krukar and Dalton (2013) showed that gaze behavior towards pieces of art is strongly affected by their relative positions in the environment. The most controlled approach on structural salience has been achieved by Röser and colleagues (Röser, Hamburger, & Knauff, 2011;Röser, Hamburger, Krumnack, & Knauff, 2012). In their studies, they presented participants a step-by-step path through a regular gridlike virtual environment.…”

“…This evidence stems from studies that made explicit requests for preferred landmark positions or route descriptions, thus incorporating an intentional selection process of landmarks by the participants (Denis et al, 1999;Lovelace et al, 1999;Röser et al, 2012). A gaze focus on structurally salient landmarks may thus depend on such intentional learning, but be less pronounced during incidental learning.…”