Referential scope and visual clutter in navigation tasks

Abstract In a production task, we investigated the effect of visual clutter in route maps on the type of referential expressions used in route descriptions, and on the descriptive efficiency and accuracy of these descriptions. We show that cluttered maps tend to diminish the use of less robust, narrow scope junction expressions (e.g. the next junction ), and promote the use of more robust, broad scope landmark expressions (e.g. the post office ). Moreover, visual clutter results in the use of more redundant information elements, words, propositions, and incorrect landmarks. Keywords: referential scope; visual detail, visual clutter; route descriptions, route maps. Introduction Navigation is a core component of cognition and daily life action. People can use route descriptions (RDs) to solve part of their navigation problems. RDs show a large variation depending on prior knowledge (e.g., Lovelace, Hegarty, & Montello, 1999), visuospatial abilities (e.g., Denis, Pazzaglia, Cornoldi, & Bertolo, 1999) and spatial perspectives of users (e.g., Brunye & Taylor, 2008; Lee & Tversky, 2005; Mellet, et al., 2000; Taylor & Tversky, 1992). Also, RDs vary with the navigation task: route following is different from wayfinding (Hartley, Maguire, Spiers, & Burgess, 2003); actual navigation is different from learning routes for later use (Thorndyke & Hayes-Roth, 1982). The core of RDs consists of the description of actions to be taken (e.g.,