Are Wayfinding Self-efficacy and Pleasure in Exploring Related to Shortcut Finding? A Study in a Virtual Environment

The analysis of individual factors supporting wayfinding ability is attracting increasing interest in the spatial cognition domain. The present study aimed to investigate whether two variables, wayfinding self-efficacy and pleasure in exploring, relate to shortcut-finding performance. A group of 124 university students were led along a route through one of two virtual environments that differed only in that one contained landmarks, while the other did not. Then they were asked to find a shortcut from the start to the end of the route they had learned. Two questionnaires were also administered to assess their wayfinding self-efficacy and pleasure in exploring. The results showed a better performance in the shortcut task for the environment containing landmarks. Individual differences correlated with shortcut-finding ability, but their predictive power was stronger in the without- than in the with-landmarks condition. The authors concluded that individual variables, such as wayfinding self-efficacy and a positive attitude to exploring, interact with environmental features (landmark availability) and relate to wayfinding performance.