Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
relative frequencies between day and night. The participants used the “Waters”
landmark group 3.4 pps (median difference) more during the day (
W
91,
p
0.05)
¼
¼
and “Rocks” 2.3 pps more at night (
W
0.02).
The one-way PERMANOVAs for demographic variables showed significant
differences for age (
F
24.5,
p
¼
¼
2.43,
p
¼
¼
0.002) and experience with orienteering maps
(
F
1.40,
p
0.05). No significant differences were present for gender or on the
SBSOD scale and not for the experience of nature, area, or with other map types.
Pair-wise regression analyses showed a slightly positive correlation between age
and the frequency of water landmarks (
ρ
¼
0.35) and a slightly negative correlation
with the frequency of sign landmarks (
ρ
¼
0.34). Experience with orienteering
maps correlated negatively with the frequency of water landmarks (
¼
¼
0.40).
Pair-wise regression analyses between the demographic variables showed that
age correlated negatively with experience with orienteering (
ρ
¼
ρ
¼
0.47) and topo-
graphic maps (
ρ
¼
0.48) and positively with the frequency of going out in nature
(
0.49). These findings suggest that although the younger participants went out
in nature less frequently, they used orienteering and topographic maps more often
compared to the older participants, resulting in slight differences in the perception
of water and sign landmarks between age groups.
With regards to the question about the differences of the task assignments
(memorising for oneself and for another person), the day participants were divided
(yes 6, no 4, 1 answer lacking) whereas the night participants answered mostly
positively (yes 8, no 1, 2 answers lacking). The answers suggest that the dark night
environment made the participants more attentive when perceiving the route for
guiding another person, and they also noted the change themselves. The darkness
possibly facilitated perceiving the route in the environment from someone else
ρ
¼
s
perspective or otherwise made cognitive processing unconstrained and diverse,
similarly to the studies of Steidle et al. (
2011
).
'
Sketch Map Drawing
The participants drew on average 21 landmark features on the sketch maps during
the day (median; 1st and 3rd quartiles 17 and 32) and 24 features at night (22, 27).
The rank of the landmark groups was similar in both conditions: “Passages” was the
largest group, followed by “Structures” and “Waters” (Fig.
2
). “Trees and parts of
trees” was the least used landmark group in the sketch maps. Video recordings
revealed that the participants often framed the sketch map with route and water
landmarks and then added structure and other landmarks.
For sketch maps, there were no statistically significant differences between day
and night in the frequencies of any of the landmark groups.
