Differential contributions of global and local object landmarks in human wayfinding behavior

Wayfinding success hinges on the effective processing of landmarks and environmental structures, yet studies examining the functional roles of different landmark types have yielded inconsistent results. This study explored the joint effects of landmark types and environmental structure regularity on wayfinding efficiency by factorially manipulating these variables. Participants navigated through environments with either regular or irregular structures, containing either global or local landmarks. We measured travel durations and paths, finding that both varied according to landmark type and environmental regularity. Notably, during the learning trials when landmarks were visible, both types improved wayfinding in irregular environments but not in regular ones, indicating that the effectiveness of salient cues depends on environmental uncertainty. Conversely, in the probe trial where landmarks were invisible, wayfinding in all environments improved following exposure to local landmarks, but only irregular environments benefited from global landmarks. These findings imply that local and global landmarks are processed and utilized differently, supporting a hierarchical processing model that weights different types of information based on their availability and reliability.