Landmark information included in turn-by-turn instructions induce incidental acquisition of lasting route knowledge

Abstract

The augmentation of landmarks in auditory navigation instructions has been shown to improve incidental spatial knowledge acquisition during assisted navigation. Here, two driving simulator experiments are reported that replicated this effect even when adding a three-week delay between navigation and spatial tasks and varying the degree of detail in the provided landmark information. Performance in free- and cued-recall of landmarks and driving the route again without assistance demonstrated increased landmark and route knowledge when navigating with landmark-based compared to common GPS instructions. The results emphasize that adding auditory landmark references to existing navigation systems can potentiate processing of spatial features of the environment during every-day navigation.