Brunyé Tad T, Mahoney Caroline R, Taylor Holly A
1 Cognitive Science Team, U.S. Army Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center, Natick, MA.
Percept Mot Skills. 2015 Apr;120(2):438-61. doi: 10.2466/22.PMS.120v11x2. Epub 2015 Mar 23.
When navigating, people tend to overestimate distances when routes contain more turns, termed the route-angularity effect. Three experiments examined the source and generality of this effect. The first two experiments examined whether route-angularity effects occur while viewing maps and might be related to sex differences or sense of direction. The third experiment tested whether the route-angularity effect would occur with stimuli devoid of spatial context, reducing influences of environmental experience and visual complexity. In the three experiments, participants (N=1,552; M=32.2 yr.; 992 men, 560 women) viewed paths plotted on maps (Exps. 1 and 2) or against a blank background (Exp. 3). The depicted paths were always the same overall length, but varied in the number of turns (from 1 to 7) connecting an origin and destination. Participants were asked to estimate the time to traverse each path (Exp. 1) or the length of each path (Exps. 2 and 3). The Santa Barbara Sense of Direction questionnaire was administered to assess whether overall spatial sense of direction would be negatively related to the magnitude of the route-angularity effect. Repeated-measures analyses of variance (ANOVAs) indicated that paths with more turns elicited estimates of greater distance and travel times, whether they were depicted on maps or blank backgrounds. Linear regressions also indicated that these effects were significantly larger in those with a relatively low sense of direction. The results support the route-angularity effect and extend it to paths plotted on map-based stimuli. Furthermore, because the route-angularity effect was shown with paths plotted against blank backgrounds, route-angularity effects are not specific to understanding environments and may arise at the level of visual perception.
在导航时，当路线包含更多转弯时，人们往往会高估距离，这被称为路线角度效应。三项实验研究了这种效应的来源和普遍性。前两项实验研究了在查看地图时是否会出现路线角度效应，以及它是否可能与性别差异或方向感有关。第三项实验测试了在没有空间背景的刺激下是否会出现路线角度效应，以减少环境经验和视觉复杂性的影响。在这三项实验中，参与者（N = 1552；M = 32.2岁；992名男性，560名女性）查看绘制在地图上的路径（实验1和2）或空白背景上的路径（实验3）。所描绘的路径总长度始终相同，但连接起点和终点的转弯数量不同（从1到7）。参与者被要求估计穿越每条路径的时间（实验1）或每条路径的长度（实验2和3）。使用圣巴巴拉方向感问卷来评估整体空间方向感是否与路线角度效应的大小呈负相关。重复测量方差分析（ANOVA）表明，转弯更多的路径会引发对更长距离和旅行时间的估计，无论它们是绘制在地图上还是空白背景上。线性回归还表明，在方向感相对较低的人群中，这些效应明显更大。结果支持了路线角度效应，并将其扩展到基于地图的刺激所绘制的路径上。此外，由于在空白背景上绘制的路径也显示出路线角度效应，因此路线角度效应并非特定于对环境的理解，可能在视觉感知层面产生。
