The role of recipient perspective in giving and following wayfinding directions

We examined how recipient perspective and descriptive features affect direction giving and following during wayfinding. In Experiment 1, participants provided directions from starting locations to destinations for fictional recipients driving through a town (route perspective) or looking at a map of the town (survey perspective). As expected, participants included left‐right and landmarks more frequently when addressing a person driving in the town and cardinal descriptors more frequently when addressing a person looking at a map. In Experiment 2, participants rated the effectiveness of directions. Effective directions contained significantly more left‐right references than did less effective directions. In Experiment 3, participants followed the best‐ and worst‐rated directions. Unexpectedly, they navigated significantly faster when following the worst‐rated directions. In Experiment 4, participants gave wayfinding directions for destinations in a familiar town. Again, direction features depended on recipient perspective, highlighting the dynamic nature of wayfinding processes.