Visual Attention during Route Learning: A Look at Selection and Engagement

Two aspects of visual attention, the selection of environmental features and the engagement of attention on those features, were examined in an experimental study using a slide-presentation simulation of route experience. Results showed that (a) after learning, viewers’ knowledge of spatial relations among high-information regions was more accurate than their knowledge of spatial relations among low-information regions; (b) during learning, viewers were more selective when looking at high-information regions than when looking at low-information regions; (c) during learning, viewers were slower to disengage attention when looking at high-information regions than when looking at low-information regions; and (d) during learning, the most common type of visual activity when viewers saw high-information regions were saccades between landmarks and the path’s vanishing point in the scene. These findings indicate that although route learning is a relatively simple and wellpracticed task, it involves attention in terms of the selection of highly informative regions for in-depth coding of spatial relations.