Landmark enhancement and strategic processing: an evaluation of strategies for spatial navigation training

Viewing a filmed route offers an alternative to more expensive and rigid methods of learning navigation skills. One advantage of film is the ability to enhance important landmarks or focus on particularly relevant information. The current research used a videotape of a spatial route to assess the usefulness of participants' interaction with landmarks and enhancement of landmarks for training spatial navigation. 48 participants were exposed to one of four videotaped route conditions: Landmark-enhanced, Question-based Interaction, Landmark-enhanced Plus Question-based Interaction, or Control (Nonenhanced without Question-based Interaction). Following the spatial navigation training with videotape, participants were asked to traverse the route in the actual building. Analyses of variance indicated that the Question-based Interaction group made significantly fewer wrong turns during traversal of the route than did the Control group. Also, enhancement of the landmarks did not significantly reduce wrong turns; in fact, it may have hindered the benefit of question-based interaction in reducing wrong turns.