Effects of visual map complexity on the attentional processing of landmarks

Area of Science:

• Human-Computer Interaction
• Cognitive Psychology
• Geographic Information Science

Background:

• Web mapping services are crucial for smartphone navigation and route planning.
• Landmark representations in maps aid orientation, route memory, and cognitive map formation.
• Map design factors like landmark distance and visual complexity influence landmark relevance.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how landmark distance to routes and map visual complexity affect landmark relevance for route memorization.
• To analyze the relationship between eye fixation patterns, landmark positions, route memory, and map complexity.

Main Methods:

• Two experiments were conducted to examine eye fixation patterns on landmark representations.
• Data collected included landmark positions, route memory recall, and visual map complexity.
• Analysis focused on the correlation between distance, complexity, and attentional processing.

Main Results:

• Attentional processing of landmarks decreases as their distance from the route, decision points, and potential decision points increases.
• Map visual complexity affects this relationship; landmarks further from the route are fixated in low-complexity maps.
• Visual complexity did not significantly impact route memory recall.

Conclusions:

• Map users may need a minimum number of reference points for spatial understanding.
• Navigation-oriented map design should consider visual complexity, potentially increasing margins in low-complexity areas.
• Further research is needed to confirm the impact of reference points on mental spatial representation formation.