Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
( W
0.68, p
0.001) and for
the sketch map data from day ( W
0.54,
¼
¼
¼
p
0.00003). The high number of variables in relation to observations also
prevented the use of the parametric MANOVA. The use of PERMANOVA is
appropriate as the statistical power of the applied test is similar or higher compared
to that of the exact version of the test (Anderson and Braak 2003 ). In the case of
significant main effects in the PERMANOVA, we ran non-parametric Wilcoxon
rank-sum tests for comparing day and night and the Wilcoxon signed rank test for
comparing thinking aloud and sketch maps. We used relative frequencies of
landmark groups for calculations (the count of a group divided by the total count
of landmarks by a participant), in order to prevent verbosity affecting the results as
well as to enable comparability between the two tasks. We tested for main effects of
the background variables of the participants (section “Participants”) one by one
against the measured relative landmark group frequencies using the PERMANOVA
(50,000 permutations within the tasks).
¼
Results
This section presents the results of the experiments together with direct notes of
their causes, whereas the synthesising overall discussion is provided in section
“Discussion”.
Thinking Aloud During Route Traversal
The participants used on average 2 min 39 s more time (median difference) for
walking through the two routes in the night condition than during the day ( W
¼
32,
p
0.02). The slower locomotion previously found in an urban night environment
(Adams and Beaton 2000 ) also seems to occur in nature because people are more
attentive to hazards on the route.
The participants spoke on average more words at night (all words counted;
median 1,120; 1st and 3rd quartiles 908 and 1,532) than during the day (921;
676, 1,320). They mentioned 55 different landmark concepts during the day and
56 concepts at night (overall 62). The participants used these landmark concepts on
average 105 times during the day (80, 128) and 123 times at night (100.5, 164.5).
Six landmark concepts were used by every participant in the thinking aloud
during route traversal: “road”, “fallen tree”, “hill”, “footpath”, “bridge” and “boat
shore”. These were located directly on the route and were clearly visible under both
lighting conditions. In the day condition, everyone also used “stairs”, which were
not necessarily visible at night as they were wooden and worn out. At night, every-
one also used “route marking”, “river”, “outdoor track”, “information sign”,
“spruce trees”, “underpass” and “streetlamp”. These were mostly features close to
the route that were well lit in the headlamp spot.
¼
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