Effects of outdoor landmark characteristics, intersection types, and decision support information on pedestrians’ spatial cognition

This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2024YFC3808700), the 2022 Reform in College Elite Curriculum Research Project of Chongqing University (Grant No. CQU-EIE-2022011), and the Higher Education Scientific Research Planning Project of China Association of Higher Education (Grant No. 24GC0103).Turn-by-turn mobile navigation facilitates wayfinding but may reduce exploration and spatial learning. This study conducted three experiments to examine how landmark features, intersection types, crowd density, and decision-point information affect wayfinding, exploration, and cognitive maps. Experiment 1 found that semantic salience, color salience, and decision-point landmarks improved landmark recognition and positional recall, unlike destination-relevant landmarks. Experiment 2 showed intersection type affected wayfinding, exploration, and cognitive map quality, while high crowd density reduced pre-intersection map checks. Experiment 3 showed that more decision-point information improved landmark memory and cognitive map quality. Findings inform urban design, navigation optimization, and spatial cognition interventions.