Are Wayfinding Self-efficacy and Pleasure in Exploring Related to Shortcut Finding? A Study in a Virtual Environment

摘要

The analysis of individual factors supporting wayfinding ability is attracting increasing interest in the spatial cognition domain. The present study aimed to investigate whether two variables, wayfinding self-efficacy and pleasure in exploring, relate to shortcut-finding performance. A group of 124 university students were led along a route through one of two virtual environments that differed only in that one contained landmarks, while the other did not. Then they were asked to find a shortcut from the start to the end of the route they had learned. Two questionnaires were also administered to assess their wayfinding self-efficacy and pleasure in exploring. The results showed a better performance in the shortcut task for the environment containing landmarks. Individual differences correlated with shortcut-finding ability, but their predictive power was stronger in the without-than in the with-landmarks condition. The authors concluded that individual variables, such as wayfinding self-efficacy and a positive attitude to exploring, interact with environmental features (landmark availability) and relate to wayfinding performance.