| dc.description.abstract | The ability to recognize and use object landmarks is crucial for efficient wayfinding. However, the roles of different types of landmarks in wayfinding remain to be clarified. In the current study, we examined how global and local landmarks are utilized differentially in novel virtual maze environments, and aimed to clarify the causes of these differences. Three different experimental conditions were constructed: first, a global object landmark condition consisted of a virtual maze surrounded by high-rise architectures visible from almost everywhere inside; second, a local object landmark condition consisted of a virtual maze with cartoon pictures of common objects only visible from certain locations posted on some walls along the paths inside; finally, a control condition consisted of a virtual maze without any object landmarks. The participants learned the layout of the environment and the target positions through a series of learning trials. Their learning performance was assessed by traveling distance, time, and ratio of successfully found targets within time limits. The results of Experiment 1 demonstrated that participants learned to navigate most efficiently in the local landmark condition, while their performance did not differ between global and control conditions. Experiment 2, 3 and 4 aimed to verify these differences were caused by natural tendency of using different spatial representations, by different spatial representation using when different landmarks were available, or by the influence of the irregular geometric structures, respectively. Experiment 5 aimed to explore the neural mechanism when people performing wayfinding task with these object landmarks with electroencephalography. In conclusion, both local and global object landmarks could benefit people’s wayfinding behavior, but it takes a longer period of time for using global landmarks to reach the optimal performance. Natural tendency of using spatial representation, accessibility to different spatial representations, and regularity of geometric structures have been preliminarily ruled out. Further studies are needed to clarify the actual mechanisms underlying the differences in performance between the global and the local landmarks.
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