Cargando…

Encouraging 5-year olds to attend to landmarks: a way to improve children's wayfinding strategies in a virtual environment

Wayfinding is defined as the ability to learn and remember a route through an environment. Previous researchers have shown that young children have difficulties remembering routes. However, very few researchers have considered how to improve young children's wayfinding abilities. Therefore, we...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Lingwood, Jamie, Blades, Mark, Farran, Emily K., Courbois, Yannick, Matthews, Danielle
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4357248/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25814960
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00174
_version_ 1782361123024011264
author Lingwood, Jamie
Blades, Mark
Farran, Emily K.
Courbois, Yannick
Matthews, Danielle
author_facet Lingwood, Jamie
Blades, Mark
Farran, Emily K.
Courbois, Yannick
Matthews, Danielle
author_sort Lingwood, Jamie
collection PubMed
description Wayfinding is defined as the ability to learn and remember a route through an environment. Previous researchers have shown that young children have difficulties remembering routes. However, very few researchers have considered how to improve young children's wayfinding abilities. Therefore, we investigated ways to help children increase their wayfinding skills. In two studies, a total of 72 5-year olds were shown a route in a six turn maze in a virtual environment and were then asked to retrace this route by themselves. A unique landmark was positioned at each junction and each junction was made up of two paths: a correct path and an incorrect path. Two different strategies improved route learning performance. In Experiment 1, verbally labeling on-route junction landmarks during the first walk reduced the number of errors and the number of trials to reach a learning criterion when the children retraced the route. In Experiment 2, encouraging children to attend to on-route junction landmarks on the first walk reduced the number of errors when the route was retraced. This was the first study to show that very young children can be taught route learning skills. The implications of our results are discussed.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-4357248
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2015
publisher Frontiers Media S.A.
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-43572482015-03-26 Encouraging 5-year olds to attend to landmarks: a way to improve children's wayfinding strategies in a virtual environment Lingwood, Jamie Blades, Mark Farran, Emily K. Courbois, Yannick Matthews, Danielle Front Psychol Psychology Wayfinding is defined as the ability to learn and remember a route through an environment. Previous researchers have shown that young children have difficulties remembering routes. However, very few researchers have considered how to improve young children's wayfinding abilities. Therefore, we investigated ways to help children increase their wayfinding skills. In two studies, a total of 72 5-year olds were shown a route in a six turn maze in a virtual environment and were then asked to retrace this route by themselves. A unique landmark was positioned at each junction and each junction was made up of two paths: a correct path and an incorrect path. Two different strategies improved route learning performance. In Experiment 1, verbally labeling on-route junction landmarks during the first walk reduced the number of errors and the number of trials to reach a learning criterion when the children retraced the route. In Experiment 2, encouraging children to attend to on-route junction landmarks on the first walk reduced the number of errors when the route was retraced. This was the first study to show that very young children can be taught route learning skills. The implications of our results are discussed. Frontiers Media S.A. 2015-03-12 /pmc/articles/PMC4357248/ /pubmed/25814960 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00174 Text en Copyright © 2015 Lingwood, Blades, Farran, Courbois and Matthews. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Lingwood, Jamie
Blades, Mark
Farran, Emily K.
Courbois, Yannick
Matthews, Danielle
Encouraging 5-year olds to attend to landmarks: a way to improve children's wayfinding strategies in a virtual environment
title Encouraging 5-year olds to attend to landmarks: a way to improve children's wayfinding strategies in a virtual environment
title_full Encouraging 5-year olds to attend to landmarks: a way to improve children's wayfinding strategies in a virtual environment
title_fullStr Encouraging 5-year olds to attend to landmarks: a way to improve children's wayfinding strategies in a virtual environment
title_full_unstemmed Encouraging 5-year olds to attend to landmarks: a way to improve children's wayfinding strategies in a virtual environment
title_short Encouraging 5-year olds to attend to landmarks: a way to improve children's wayfinding strategies in a virtual environment
title_sort encouraging 5-year olds to attend to landmarks: a way to improve children's wayfinding strategies in a virtual environment
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4357248/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25814960
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00174
work_keys_str_mv AT lingwoodjamie encouraging5yearoldstoattendtolandmarksawaytoimprovechildrenswayfindingstrategiesinavirtualenvironment
AT bladesmark encouraging5yearoldstoattendtolandmarksawaytoimprovechildrenswayfindingstrategiesinavirtualenvironment
AT farranemilyk encouraging5yearoldstoattendtolandmarksawaytoimprovechildrenswayfindingstrategiesinavirtualenvironment
AT courboisyannick encouraging5yearoldstoattendtolandmarksawaytoimprovechildrenswayfindingstrategiesinavirtualenvironment
AT matthewsdanielle encouraging5yearoldstoattendtolandmarksawaytoimprovechildrenswayfindingstrategiesinavirtualenvironment