Seeing Beyond Your Visual Field

Previous research has suggested that the layout of urban spaces can have a substantial influence on how people navigate through those spaces. However, to date, few studies have directly investigated how changes in layout interact with changes in visual field to shape a person’s route choice. Across two experiments, the influence of visual field and spatial layout was manipulated using virtual reality. It was found that route choice was significantly influenced by the configuration of a space—The more consistently organized environment led to more systematic route choices. However, limiting the perception of distant visual information was found to influence route choice in a similar but completely independent way. These findings suggest that navigation in urban spaces is dependent on the interaction between topology and the visual features of the space, where greater visual field and a consistently organized spatial layout lead to maximally efficient route choices.