The structural salience of landmarks: results from an on-line study and a virtual environment experiment

Abstract

The term ‘structural salience’ refers to the characteristics of landmarks that are immediately related to navigation. One of the central aspects of this kind of salience is where a landmark is located at an intersection. Klippel and Winter (2005) developed a mathematical measure that describes the ideal position of a landmark at an intersection. In the first experiment (on-line study) we examined the four different landmark positions from a bird's-eye perspective and in the second experiment (virtual environment) from an egocentric perspective. We compare our results with Klippel and Winter's model and provide some evidence to support their assumptions empirically.

Keywords:

• visual landmarks
• structural salience
• spatial cognition
• modelling
• psychology

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the German Research Foundation grant HA 5954/1-1 (to KH and MK). We thank Leandra Bucher, Jelica Nejasmic, Anja Gatzsche, Nadja Stein and Cate Trillmich for valuable comments and for their support with data collection.