A Cognitive Model of Strategies for Cardinal Direction Judgments

Previous research has identified a variety of strategies used by novice and experienced navigators in making cardinal direction judgments (Gugerty, Brooks, & Treadaway, 2004 Gugerty, L. 2004. “Using cognitive task analysis to design multiple synthetic tasks for uninhabited aerial vehicle operation”. In Scaled worlds: Development, validation, and application, Edited by: Schiflett, S., Elliott, L., Salas, E. and Coovert, M. 240–262. London: Ashgate Publishers. [Google Scholar]). We developed an ACT-R cognitive model of some of these strategies that instantiated a number of concepts from research in spatial cognition, including a visual-short-term-memory buffer overlaid on a perceptual buffer, an egocentric reference frame in visual-short-term-memory, storage of categorical spatial information in visual-short-term-memory, and rotation of a mental compass in visual-short-term-memory. Response times predicted by the model fit well with the data of two groups, college students (N = 20) trained and practiced in the modeled strategies, and jet pilots (N = 4) with no strategy training. Thus, the cognitive model seems to provide an accurate description of important strategies for cardinal direction judgments. Additionally, it demonstrates how theoretical constructs in spatial cognition can be applied to a complex, realistic navigation task.