Chair of Cognitive Science, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
Department of Biology, Miami University, Oxford, USA.
Sci Rep. 2021 Sep 23;11(1):18980. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-98439-1.
Visibility is the degree to which different parts of the environment can be observed from a given vantage point. In the absence of previous familiarity or signage, the visibility of key elements in a multilevel environment (e.g., the entrance, exit, or the destination itself) becomes a primary input to make wayfinding decisions and avoid getting lost. Previous research has focused on memory-based wayfinding and mental representation of 3D space, but few studies have investigated the direct effects of visibility on wayfinding. Moreover, to our knowledge, there are no studies that have explicitly observed the interaction between visibility and wayfinding under uncertainty in a multilevel environment. To bridge this gap, we studied how the visibility of destinations, as well as the continuity of sight-lines along the vertical dimension, affects unaided and goal-directed wayfinding behavior in a multilevel desktop Virtual Reality (VR) study. We obtained results from a total of 69 participants. Each participant performed a total of 24 wayfinding trials in a multilevel environment. Results showcase a significant and nonlinear correlation between the visibility of destinations and wayfinding behavioral characteristics. Specifically, once the destination was in sight, regardless of whether it was highly or barely visible, participants made an instantaneous decision to switch floors and move up towards the destination. In contrast, if the destination was out-of-sight, participants performed 'visual exploration', indicated by an increase in vertical head movements and greater time taken to switch floors. To demonstrate the direct applicability of this fundamental wayfinding behavioral pattern, we formalize these results by modeling a visibility-based cognitive agent. Our results show that by modeling the transition between exploration and exploitation as a function of visibility, cognitive agents were able to replicate human wayfinding patterns observed in the desktop VR study. This simple demonstration shows the potential of extending our main findings concerning the nonlinear relationship between visibility and wayfinding to inform the modeling of human cognition.
可见性是指从给定的有利位置观察环境中不同部分的程度。在没有先前熟悉度或标识的情况下，多层环境中关键元素的可见性（例如入口、出口或目的地本身）成为进行寻路决策和避免迷路的主要输入。先前的研究侧重于基于记忆的寻路和 3D 空间的心理表象，但很少有研究调查可见性对寻路的直接影响。此外，据我们所知，在多层环境中不确定的情况下，没有研究明确观察到可见性和寻路之间的相互作用。为了弥补这一空白，我们在多层桌面虚拟现实 (VR) 研究中研究了目的地的可见性以及沿垂直维度的视线连续性如何影响无辅助和有目标的寻路行为。我们从总共 69 名参与者那里获得了结果。每个参与者在多层环境中总共执行了 24 次寻路试验。结果展示了目的地可见性与寻路行为特征之间存在显著的非线性相关性。具体来说，一旦目的地在视线范围内，无论其可见度高低，参与者都会立即决定切换楼层并向上移动到目的地。相比之下，如果目的地在视线之外，参与者会进行“视觉探索”，表现为垂直头部运动增加和切换楼层所需的时间增加。为了证明这种基本寻路行为模式的直接适用性，我们通过建模基于可见性的认知代理来形式化这些结果。我们的结果表明，通过将探索和利用之间的转换建模为可见性的函数，认知代理能够复制在桌面 VR 研究中观察到的人类寻路模式。这个简单的演示展示了将我们关于可见性和寻路之间非线性关系的主要发现扩展到告知人类认知建模的潜力。
