Woollett Katherine, Maguire Eleanor A
Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, Institute of Neurology, University College London, 12 Queen Square, London WC1N 3BG, United Kingdom.
J Environ Psychol. 2010 Dec;30(4-2):565-573. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvp.2010.03.003.
Becoming proficient at navigation in urban environments is something that we all aspire to. Here we asked whether being an expert at wayfinding in one environment has any effect on learning new spatial layouts. Licensed London taxi drivers are among the most proficient urban navigators, training for many years to find their way around a complex and irregularly-laid out city. We first tested how well they could learn the layout of an unfamiliar town compared with a group of non-taxi drivers. Second, we investigated how effectively taxi drivers could integrate a new district into their existing spatial representation of London. We found that taxi drivers were significantly better than control participants at executing routes through the new town, and representing it at a map-like survey level. However, the benefits of navigational expertise were not universal. Compared with their performance in the new town, taxi drivers were significantly poorer at learning the layout of a new area that had to be integrated with their existing knowledge of London. We consider reasons for this picture of facilitation and limitation, in particular drawing parallels with how knowledge acquisition occurs in the context of expertise in general.
在城市环境中熟练导航是我们所有人都渴望做到的。在此，我们探讨了在一种环境中成为寻路专家是否会对学习新的空间布局产生影响。伦敦的持牌出租车司机是最熟练的城市导航者之一，他们经过多年训练，以便在布局复杂且不规则的城市中找到路线。我们首先测试了与一群非出租车司机相比，他们学习一个陌生城镇布局的能力如何。其次，我们研究了出租车司机将一个新区域整合到他们现有的伦敦空间表征中的效果如何。我们发现，在执行穿过新城镇的路线以及在类似地图的测量水平上对其进行表征方面，出租车司机明显优于对照组参与者。然而，导航专业知识的益处并非普遍适用。与他们在新城镇的表现相比，出租车司机在学习一个必须与他们现有的伦敦知识相结合的新区域布局方面明显较差。我们思考了这种促进与限制情况出现的原因，特别是将其与一般专业知识背景下知识获取的方式进行类比。
