Department of Psychology, Montclair State University, Montclair, New Jersey, USA.
Department of Psychology, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, USA.
J Genet Psychol. 2022 Nov-Dec;183(6):580-608. doi: 10.1080/00221325.2022.2103789. Epub 2022 Jul 29.
Wayfinding refers to the process of locating unseen destinations in the spatial environment and is an important spatial skill for children. Despite a growing interest in wayfinding development in children, less attention has been focused on documenting the vast methodological heterogeneity of the existing research body, which impacts the ability to synthesize results across different studies. This review aims to systematically catalog and examine the research methods of the wayfinding development literature. We identified a total of 96 studies that examined 4- to 16- year-old children's wayfinding of unfamiliar, large-scale environments and were published between 1965 and 2020. Based on the environments, we grouped these studies into virtual reality (VR) vs. real-life and indoor vs. outdoor. The review revealed a vast diversity in research methods regarding participants, environments, independent variables (IVs), environmental exposure, dependent variables (DVs), and cognitive/behavioral correlates. The field has seen growing research interests in VR environments and atypical development. The most common IVs focused on the environmental features of landmarks and turn information. Relatively less research considered how different cognitive processes such as attention, memory, and learning contribute to wayfinding. Various outcome measures have been used to investigate landmark, route, and survey knowledge regarding DVs. This review showed an imbalance of topic areas in the field, systematic differences between different types of studies, and the need for greater attention on a number of important topics. Finally, we provided targeted, detailed recommendations for future research.
寻路是指在空间环境中定位未见过的目的地的过程，是儿童的一项重要空间技能。尽管人们对儿童寻路能力的发展越来越感兴趣，但对记录现有研究体中广泛的方法异质性的关注较少，这影响了跨不同研究综合结果的能力。本综述旨在系统地对寻路发展文献的研究方法进行分类和检查。我们共确定了 96 项研究，这些研究考察了 4 至 16 岁儿童对不熟悉的大规模环境的寻路能力，发表时间在 1965 年至 2020 年之间。基于环境，我们将这些研究分为虚拟现实（VR）与现实生活和室内与室外。综述结果表明，在参与者、环境、自变量（IVs）、环境暴露、因变量（DVs）和认知/行为相关性方面，研究方法存在很大的多样性。该领域对 VR 环境和非典型发育的研究兴趣日益浓厚。最常见的 IVs 集中在地标和转弯信息的环境特征上。相对较少的研究考虑了不同的认知过程，如注意力、记忆和学习，如何有助于寻路。各种结果衡量标准被用于研究地标、路线和调查知识的 DVs。本综述表明该领域的主题领域不平衡，不同类型的研究之间存在系统性差异，需要更加关注一些重要的主题。最后，我们针对未来研究提供了有针对性的、详细的建议。
