Effect of Landmark Type on Route Memory in Unfamiliar Homogenous Environment

Landmarks are objects that have salience that is either visual, semantic or structural. Recent researches have pointed out observer characteristics that make a landmark salient. These have been termed cognitive salience. This study investigated the effects of two components of cognitive salience, familiarity and degree of recognition, on route memory. The first experiment examined the effect of familiarity of landmark and ease with which it could be recognized (degree of recognition) on remembering a route, while in the second experiment only degree of recognition was varied while holding familiarity constant. Two types of landmarks (text and image) were shown to participants who had to recollect course taken at decision points during wayfinding tasks. Participants were shown navigation videos generated using Squareland Model. The videos had six decision points each having one landmark, and the participants were required to indicate the direction of the turn when the landmarks were shown again. Results showed that pictorial landmarks (high degree of recognition) were better facilitators of route memory than textual landmarks (low degree of recognition). Results also indicated that familiar buildings served as better landmarks than unfamiliar buildings. In the second experiment another level of degree of recognition (medium) was added and compared with high and low levels. Results confirmed the findings of the first experiment with high degree of recognition being the best facilitator followed by medium and low degree of recognition. Our findings lend empirical support to the concept of cognitive salience proposed by Caduff and Timpf (Cogn Process 9:249–267, 2008) and highlight the importance of observer characteristics in determining what constitutes as good landmark.