U.S. Army Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center, Natick, Massachusetts, USA.
Mem Cognit. 2010 Sep;38(6):700-12. doi: 10.3758/MC.38.6.700.
Navigators use both external cues and internal heuristics to help them plan efficient routes through environments. In six experiments, we discover and seek the origin of a novel heuristic that causes participants to preferentially choose southern rather than northern routes during map-based route planning. Experiment 1 demonstrates that participants who are tasked to choose between two equal-length routes, one going generally north and one south, show reliable decision preferences toward the southern option. Experiment 2 demonstrates that participants produce a southern preference only when instructed to adopt egocentric rather than allocentric perspectives during route planning. In Experiments 3-5, we examined participants' judgments of route characteristics and found that judgments of route length and preferences for upper relative to lower path options do not contribute to the southern route preference. Rather, the southern route preference appears to be a result of misperceptions of increased elevation to the north (i.e., north is up). Experiment 6 further supports this finding by demonstrating that participants provide greater time estimates for north- than for equivalent south-going routes when planning travel between U.S. cities. Results are discussed with regard to predicting wayfinding behavior, the mental simulation of action, and theories of spatial cognition and navigation.
导航员利用外部线索和内部启发式来帮助他们规划高效的环境路线。在六个实验中，我们发现并探究了一种新颖启发式的起源，这种启发式导致参与者在基于地图的路线规划中优先选择南部而不是北部路线。实验 1 表明，当参与者被要求在两条等长的路线之间做出选择时，一条大致向北，另一条向南，他们会优先选择南部路线。实验 2 表明，只有当参与者在路线规划中被指示采用自我中心而不是以自我为中心的视角时，才会产生南部偏好。在实验 3-5 中，我们检查了参与者对路线特征的判断，发现路线长度的判断和对上下路径选项的偏好并不能导致对南部路线的偏好。相反，南部路线偏好似乎是对北部海拔升高的误解的结果（即，北方是上）。实验 6 通过演示参与者在规划美国城市之间的旅行时，为向北的路线而不是等效的向南路线提供更大的时间估计，进一步支持了这一发现。结果将根据预测寻路行为、行动的心理模拟以及空间认知和导航理论进行讨论。
