Integration of Aggregated Information and Subjective Experience

Through Sequential Information Presentation

Yoshimasa Ohmoto and Hiroki Yamamoto

Shizuoka University, Hamamatsu, Shizuoka, Japan

Keywords:

Agent, Pedestorian Navigation, Guidance, Sequential Presentations.

Abstract:

Often, when following a pedestrian navigation system, individuals do not remember the route taken or the

buildings passed upon arriving at their destination. We hypothesized that by integrating sparsely aggregated

information from the problem space into the context of the user’s subjective experience, the problem space

could be more comprehensively understood from the periphery of the subjective experience. In this study, we

tested this hypothesis using pedestrian navigation. Speciﬁcally, we proposed a method for mapping aggregated

information to subjective experience by incorporating landmarks around the user into the route guidance by

a guide agent and sequentially presenting information even at non-decisive points that do not prompt a route

change. Experimental results indicated signiﬁcant differences in ”information organization” and ”understand-

ing of urban space” in questionnaires. Signiﬁcant differences were also observed in route memory. The results

suggest that the proposed method facilitates the integration of aggregated information to subjective experience.

1 INTRODUCTION

The widespread adoption of smartphones has made

pedestrian navigation systems indispensable in daily

life. However, conventional systems primarily focus

on delivering route and distance information, often

leading users to passively follow instructions with a

sense of anxiety (Ishikawa et al., 2008; M

unzer et al.,

2006). This passive reliance can hinder indepen-

dent information-seeking behavior and negatively im-

pact spatial comprehension and route memory (Willis

et al., 2009; Huang et al., 2012). The limited ﬁeld of

view offered by the systems and the reduced attention

to the surrounding environment contribute to this.

To address these issues, researchers have pro-

posed incorporating landmarks into navigation guid-

ance (May et al., 2003; Raubal and Winter, 2002).

Landmarks serve as crucial directional cues in spa-

tial navigation and play a signiﬁcant role in human

spatial perception (Sorrows and Hirtle, 1999; Caduff

and Timpf, 2008). Studies have shown that includ-

ing landmark information increases user conﬁdence

and improves adherence to the suggested path (Ross

et al., 2004). Moreover, human spatial cognition re-

lies on three types of spatial knowledge: landmarks,

routes, and distance perception (Siegel, 1975; Mon-

tello, 1998). While existing navigation systems pro-

vide route and distance information, the proper inte-

gration of landmark information may enhance mem-

ory of urban environments (Richter and Winter, 2014;

Schwering et al., 2013). However, current approaches

typically provide landmark information only at de-

cision points, such as intersections, neglecting the

user’s experience in areas where no action choices are

required. This approach, while effective in utilizing

landmarks as directional cues, may compromise the

user’s subjective experience in environments with few

behavioral changes, such as long straight roads.

To address this limitation, we propose a novel nav-

igation system that sequentially presents information

about the surrounding environment along the entire

route, including locations without action decisions.

This system aims to closely correlate the user’s sub-

jective experience with the aggregated navigation in-

formation. Speciﬁcally, it provides route guidance

alongside sequential presentation of information on

nearby landmarks and route conditions, thereby en-

riching the subjective experience by adding contex-

tually relevant information throughout the navigation

process. An embodied agent is consistently displayed

in the system, offering a degree of empathy and sim-

ulating the experience of walking alongside the user.

This study aims to verify whether the proposed

system improves the integration of aggregated infor-

mation from the navigation system with the user’s

subjective experience through sequential information

412

Ohmoto, Y. and Yamamoto, H.

Integration of Aggregated Information and Subjective Experience Through Sequential Information Presentation.

DOI: 10.5220/0013161600003890

Paper published under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

In Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Agents and Artiﬁcial Intelligence (ICAART 2025) - Volume 1, pages 412-419

ISBN: 978-989-758-737-5; ISSN: 2184-433X

presentation. We will evaluate the impact of our

method on users’ ability to grasp geospatial informa-

tion, analyze its effect on route memory, and inves-

tigate its inﬂuence on users’ subjective impressions.

By facilitating the integration of aggregated informa-

tion into subjective experience, our approach seeks

to enable a more comprehensive understanding of the

problem space from the periphery of the user’s expe-

rience. This research contributes to the development

of more effective and user-friendly pedestrian naviga-

tion systems and demonstrates how mapping aggre-

gate information to subjective experience can enhance

overall spatial comprehension.

2 RELATED WORKS

Previous research has extensively investigated the im-

pact of mobile navigation systems on spatial mem-

ory and cognition. Studies comparing mobile device-

based navigation with traditional map-based route

ﬁnding have consistently shown that the use of nav-

igation systems affects spatial memory and under-

standing (Ishikawa et al., 2008; M

unzer et al., 2006).

Ishikawa et al. (2006) found that users of navigation

systems tend to develop a bias towards visual mem-

ory at the expense of spatial comprehension (Ishikawa

and Montello, 2006). Similarly, Munzer et al. (2012)

highlighted that navigation systems may impede the

formation of cognitive maps (M

unzer et al., 2012),

while Willis et al. (2009) demonstrated that mobile

maps led to decreased acquisition of spatial knowl-

edge compared to paper maps (Willis et al., 2009).

Landmarks play a crucial role in pedestrian nav-

igation and spatial cognition. May et al. (2003)

emphasized that landmarks serve as reference points

in urban environments, aiding in spatial organiza-

tion and route selection (May et al., 2003). Sorrows

& Hirtle (1999) noted that landmarks contribute not

only as directional cues but also to the formation of

spatial memory (Sorrows and Hirtle, 1999). Caduff

& Timpf (2008) further demonstrated that the pres-

ence of landmarks improves path reconstruction per-

formance (Caduff and Timpf, 2008).

The effectiveness of landmarks depends on their

distinctiveness and informational value. Stankiewicz

& Kalia (2007) pointed out that objects serving as

landmarks need to have a distinctive appearance and

provide useful information (Stankiewicz and Kalia,

2007). Richter & Winter (2014) found that physical

characteristics such as size, shape, and color inﬂuence

landmark retention (Richter and Winter, 2014). In-

terestingly, Janzen & van Turennout (2004) showed

that objects near decision points are remembered for

longer periods, highlighting the importance of context

in spatial memory (Janzen and Van Turennout, 2004).

The role of context in memory formation and re-

call is well-established in cognitive psychology. Tulv-

ing & Thomson’s (1973) encoding speciﬁcity princi-

ple demonstrates that context during learning serves

as a memory cue (Tulving and Thomson, 1973).

Smith & Vela’s (2001) meta-analysis conﬁrms the in-

ﬂuence of environmental context on memory repro-

duction (Smith and Vela, 2001). Barsalou (2008)

emphasizes that knowledge acquisition and use are

closely related to speciﬁc situations and contexts

(Barsalou, 2008). These theories are applicable to the

formation and recall of spatial memory in navigation.

While previous studies have primarily focused on

the effects of landmarks at decision points (Rehrl

et al., 2010; Anacta et al., 2017), our study proposes

a novel approach that promotes the integration of the

user’s subjective experience with aggregated informa-

tion. By sequentially presenting information about

the surrounding environment at all points, including

those that do not require action decisions, we aim to

address the assistance dilemma and enhance overall

spatial comprehension. This approach extends the

concept of ”user-centered spatial information provi-

sion” proposed by (Schwering et al., 2013) and builds

upon the importance of landmark information in nav-

igation instructions, as highlighted by (Anacta et al.,

2017). Our method seeks to provide more compre-

hensive information by mapping aggregated data to

the user’s subjective experience, potentially facili-

tating a more holistic understanding of the problem

space from the periphery of the user’s experience.

In this study, we investigate whether our proposed

method can seamlessly integrate subjective experi-

ence and aggregated information, as well as exam-

ine the secondary effects of this integration on ex-

perimental participants. By doing so, we aim to

contribute to the development of more effective and

user-friendly pedestrian navigation that enhance spa-

tial cognition and memory formation.

3 SEQUENTIAL INFORMATION

PRESENTATION

This study proposes an extension to conventional nav-

igation systems, addressing the effective and user-

friendly pedestrian navigation by integrating aggre-

gated information with users’ subjective experiences.

Our approach goes beyond using landmarks solely

as directional cues, instead providing sequential in-

formation about surrounding buildings and the envi-

ronment at multiple points along the route, includ-

Integration of Aggregated Information and Subjective Experience Through Sequential Information Presentation

413

ing those not requiring action decisions. This method

aims to promote a comprehensive understanding of

the problem space by effectively mapping aggregated

information to the user’s subjective experience. In or-

der to provide a certain degree of empathy, an embod-

ied agent is always displayed in the navigation system

and acts as if it is walking with the user.

Our hypothesis states: ”Contextual and sequen-

tial presentation of information improves geospatial

grasp, positively impacts memory retention and infor-

mation integration of routes traversed, and enhances

subjective impressions of navigation.”

The proposed system builds upon previous re-

search that primarily focused on using objects near

decision points as landmarks. While these methods

effectively utilize landmarks as directional cues, our

approach extends this concept in two key ways:

Information Provision at Non-Decision Points

We sequentially present supplementary peripheral

information at points not requiring action deci-

sions.

Continuous Environmental Understanding

We provide context-sensitive information about

the surrounding environment to support ongoing

geospatial understanding and increase user conﬁ-

dence in the navigation system.

Our method focuses on contextual information in

the user’s vicinity, successively presenting engaging

information such as names, characteristics, and his-

torical backgrounds. To enhance the usefulness of

these objects, we also provide information related to

user attributes and destinations. This information is

delivered in the most appropriate format (text, im-

ages, or audio) based on the user’s situation and pref-

erences. An Embodied Conversational Agent, con-

stantly displayed in the navigation system, presents

general walking behavior and peripheral information-

seeking actions, offering a degree of empathy and

simulating the experience of walking alongside the

user. The examples of decision point navigation (De-

cision Navi.) and sequential presentation navigation

(Sequential Navi.) are shown in Figure 1.

To verify the effectiveness of our approach, we

will conduct pedestrian navigation experiments using

the developed system. Participants will be divided

into two groups: one using a conventional naviga-

tion system and the other using our proposed system.

We will analyze and compare both groups’ geospa-

tial comprehension, route memory, and subjective im-

pressions of navigation post-experiment. Speciﬁcally,

we aim to verify that: Spatial comprehension is im-

proved by incorporating virtual city environment ob-

jects into navigation and presenting information se-

quentially and contextually. Sequential information

Let's go for the

tower!

Let's go for the

tower!

The shop famous for

their cakes. There

are lots of people.

Cyclists coming out of

the school at dismissal

time are dangerous.

Decision Navi.

Sequential Navi.

・・・・・・

Figure 1: The examples of decision point navigation and

sequential presentation navigation.

presentation is effective in consolidating route mem-

ory and reducing mental workload during navigation.

This methodology aligns with the study’s over-

all goal of investigating whether the proposed sys-

tem can seamlessly integrate subjective experience

and aggregated information, as well as examining the

secondary effects of this integration. We address the

limitations of previous studies that focused primar-

ily on landmark effects at decision points, extending

the concept of user-centered spatial information pro-

vision and potentially enhancing overall spatial cogni-

tion and memory formation in pedestrian navigation.

4 EXPERIMENT

To validate our hypothesis that integrating contextual

objects and presenting sequential information in a vir-

tual urban environment enhances geospatial compre-

hension and reduces mental workload, we conducted

a comparative experiment. This study aimed to ad-

dress the hypothesis by seamlessly integrating aggre-

gated information with users’ subjective experiences,

potentially facilitating a more comprehensive under-

standing of the problem space.

In this experiment, an immersive full-screen mon-

itor was used to simulate a walking situation by creat-

ing a virtual urban space on its screen. Participants

performed two experimental tasks: an action deci-

sion navigation task (DecisionNavi-Task) and a se-

quential information navigation task (SequentialNavi-

Task). In the DecisionNavi-Task, participants aimed

at the destination using voice guidance that presents

information at the point where action decisions are

required, as implemented in existing navigation ap-

plications. In the SequentialNavi-Task, participants

aimed at the destination using voice guidance that

ICAART 2025 - 17th International Conference on Agents and Artiﬁcial Intelligence

414

Immersive display

Virtual space

projection PC

Display the virtual

space and navigation

Participant

Figure 2: The experimental setting.

presents information including nearby landmarks and

contextual information sequentially.

As a subjective measure, 7-point Likert scale

questionnaires were asked to participants after the

completion of each task to conﬁrm the participant’s

impressions for the navigation agent. After both

tasks were completed, questionnaires were asked to

compare and evaluate subjective impressions in both

tasks. After the completion of each task, the partic-

ipants were shown the route they had taken and an

image of a certain intersection and asked to draw the

direction they should take as an objective measure of

their memory of the route and geospatial information.

4.1 Experimental Settings

Participants in the experiment stood on an omni-

directional treadmill placed in the center of an area

surrounded by an immersive full-screen monitor con-

sisting of 8 displays. Eight displays showed the urban

environment, mini-maps, etc. The walking simula-

tor presenting the urban environment was created in

unity. Navigation sounds and warnings when devi-

ating from the route guidance were output from the

speakers. Walking was controlled by a controller held

by the participant. However, they were instructed to

perform walking movements on the treadmill in ac-

cordance with the screen transitions. A schematic di-

agram of the experimental environment and the actual

experiment are shown in Figure 2.

4.2 Task

Participants in the experiment performed tasks to

navigate within a virtual urban environment using

two different navigation systems, respectively. In

the action-decision navigation, participants followed

a guide that directed them in the direction of travel

and voice navigation at the point where they needed

to make an action decision, and then traveled to the

designated destination. In the sequential information

navigation, in which sequential information was pre-

Figure 3: The map and route used in ﬁrst task.

sented according to the participants’ context, the par-

ticipants moved to the designated destination follow-

ing voice guidance that presented sequential informa-

tion on nearby landmarks and contextual information

(names, features, history, non-player characters’ be-

havior, time etc.) in addition to the direction of travel.

The virtual city map used in each task was different,

and each had two transit points. Participants in the

experiment relied on the voice guidance and the mini-

map displayed on the screen to select a route to reach

the destination. In both conditions, the route search

took approximately 10 minutes. The map and route

used in ﬁrst task is shown in Figure 3.

4.2.1 Navigation

The voice used for navigation was created using text-

to-speech software. The timing of the voice was set

so that the speciﬁed navigation voice would be played

when the participants passed a certain point. When

participants deviated from the route, they were noti-

ﬁed that they had deviated from the route. The navi-

gation audio and the audio when the participant devi-

ated from the route were played at the same volume

from the speakers. The navigation features used in

each task were as follows.

Action Decision Navigation

Audio navigation is presented at the point where

an action decision is required while displaying the

direction of travel and distance. The navigation

voice is pre-created according to the task. In the

task, the navigation was presented approximately

once every 25 seconds.

Sequential Information Navigation

In addition to the audio of the action decision nav-

igation, information related to surrounding land-

marks is presented at points where no action deci-

sion is made. In addition, information about time

and the surrounding situation is presented accord-

ing to the context of the participant. The informa-

tion presented includes: ”There is an apparel store

Integration of Aggregated Information and Subjective Experience Through Sequential Information Presentation

415

on the right. It is a little expensive, but it seems

to be popular.” ”There is a cafe on the left side,

which seems to be crowded with young people.”

In the task, navigation is provided approximately

once every 15 seconds.

In this experimental setup, audio navigation in-

structions were systematically pre-recorded and de-

livered through an automated playback system. The

navigational content was dynamically determined

based on three key parameters: (1) the participant’s

current geographic coordinates on the designated task

map, (2) the cumulative time elapsed since task initi-

ation, and (3) the speciﬁc trajectory patterns observed

in the participant’s route selection. The temporal fre-

quency of navigational cues was modulated within a

predetermined range to maintain optimal information

delivery while avoiding cognitive overload.

4.3 Procedure

Participants ﬁrst entered the experimental environ-

ment, surrounded by an immersive monitor, and prac-

ticed moving and navigating within the virtual space

for about ﬁve minutes. Participants were then pre-

sented with a picture showing the overall path they

would take in the task to see the path. At the same

time, they were informed that questions about the

path they had taken were prepared for them after each

task. After conﬁrming that the participants under-

stood, the ﬁrst task was performed, and after the task

was completed, the participants were asked to note on

a map the route they had taken during the task. Then,

they were presented with images of three intersec-

tions that they had actually passed, and were asked on

which direction they should go in order to reach their

destination. Afterwards, the participants were asked

to complete questionnaires regarding their subjective

impressions. After answering the questionnaires, the

participants took a short rest. After the rest, a sec-

ond task was performed, and after the task was com-

pleted, the participants were asked to note on a map

the route they had taken during the task. The partici-

pants were then presented with images of three inter-

sections that they had actually passed, and were asked

on which direction they should go in order to reach

their destination. Afterwards, the participants were

asked to complete questionnaires regarding their sub-

jective impressions. After informing the participants

that the all tasks had been completed, they asked to

answer questionnaires comparing the tasks.

Twenty-three university students (12 males and

11 females, mean age 20.7 years, SD 1.51) partici-

pated in the experiment. Each participant performed

two experimental tasks: an action decision navigation

Table 1: Results of subjective impression questionnaires

about SequentialNavi and DecisionNavi.

Item S. Navi (SD) D. Navi (SD) p-value

IO 4.3 (1.46) 3.57 (2.06) .015**

PF 4.78 (1.54) 5.65 (1.47) .041*

MW 2.52 (1.08) 3.26 (1.96) .060

DU 4.57 (1.47) 4.22 (2.04) .425

Uf 5.65 (1.11) 5.39 (1.62) .479

SE 5.26 (1.86) 2.83 (1.37) <.001***

DT 4.13 (1.58) 4.30 (2.08) .762

An 3.04 (1.77) 3.17 (1.83) .803

*** p < .001, ** p < .01, * p < .05

task (DecisionNavi-Task) and a sequential informa-

tion navigation task (SequentialNavi-Task). The or-

der was counterbalanced.

4.4 Results

We focused on three main areas: subjective impres-

sion questionnaires, task comparison questionnaires,

and geospatial understanding. These were designed

to evaluate the effectiveness of our proposed sequen-

tial information presentation method in addressing the

hypothesis and enhancing spatial cognition.

4.4.1 Subjective impression questionnaires

Participants responded on a 7-point Likert scale to

eight items related to subjective impressions. The

items are listed below.

Information Organization (IO): I was able to orga-

nize the information from the route guidance by

associating it with the scene in front of me.

Passive Feeling (PF): I felt that the route guidance

was forcing me to give directions.

Mental Workload (MW): I felt anxiety and worry

throughout the task.

Derection Understanding (DU): I understood ex-

actly where I needed to go.

Usefulness (Uf): The information from the route

guidance was helpful.

Surrounding Environment (SE): I was able to fo-

cus on my surroundings.

Directional Thinking (DT): I was always thinking

about my future course.

Annoyance (An): I found the route guidance annoy-

ing and depressing.

Wilcoxon signed-rank tests were performed on

responses to the DecisionNavi-Task and to the

SequentialNavi-Task. Results are shown in Table 1.

ICAART 2025 - 17th International Conference on Agents and Artiﬁcial Intelligence

416

Table 2: Results of task comparison questionnaires between

the DecisionNavi-Task and the SequentialNavi-Task.

Item Ave. SD v p-value

PF -1.39 1.80 33.5 .002**

DU 0.39 2.08 154 .374

USU 1.73 1.32 234 < .001***

PI 1.34 1.43 209 .001**

Im -0.87 1.86 59.0 .027*

MW -1.04 1.36 19.5 .004**

SE 2.00 1.13 271 < .001***

*** p < .001, ** p < .01, * p < .05

Wilcoxon signed-rank tests revealed signiﬁcant

differences in three items: ”Information organi-

zation” (p = .015), ”Passive feeling” (p = .041),

and ”Surrounding environment” (p < .001). The

SequentialNavi-Task showed higher scores for infor-

mation organization and awareness of the surrounding

environment, suggesting that our approach success-

fully integrated aggregated information with users’

subjective experiences. Interestingly, participants re-

ported feeling less passive pressure from the naviga-

tion system in the SequentialNavi-Task, contrary to

potential concerns about information overload.

4.4.2 Task Comparison Questionnaires

Participants responded to their subjective impressions

by directly comparing the DecisionNavi-Task and the

SequentialNavi-Task on seven items (+3 to -3; pos-

itive: SequentialNavi-Task, negative: DecisionNavi-

Task). The items are listed below.

Passive Feeling (PF): Which Navi made you feel

like you were being forced to follow directions?

Derection Understanding (DU): Which Navi made

it easier to understand direction and distance?

Urban Space Understanding (USU): Which Navi

made it easier to connect directions and surround-

ings?

Positive Impression (PI): Which Navi did you like

better overall?

Immersion (Im): Which Navi made you more fo-

cused on the task?

Mental Workload (MW): Which Navi made you

more anxious or worried during the task?

Surrounding Environment (SE): Which Navi

made you more aware of your surroundings?

A one-sample Wilcoxon rank sum test was per-

formed for each. The results are shown in Table 2.

Signiﬁcant differences were found in six out of

seven items, with particularly large differences in

Blue: Decision-Navi condition

Pink: Sequential-Navi condition

Figure 4: The histogram of the difference from the correct

path in the DecisionNavi-Task and SequentialNavi-Task.

”Urban space understanding” (p < .001) and ”Sur-

rounding environment” (p < .001). These results indi-

cate that our proposed method effectively mapped ob-

jects in urban space with navigation information, pro-

moting a more comprehensive understanding of the

environment. Notably, the SequentialNavi-Task was

associated with reduced mental workload (p = .004)

and a more positive overall impression (p = .001),

supporting our hypothesis that sequential information

presentation can alleviate the mental workload.

4.4.3 Geospatial Understanding

We analyzed the paths walked during the task, which

were answered by the participants after each task was

completed. Two of the participants did not describe

the route correctly, so their data were removed from

the analysis. The difference from the correct path

was analyzed as the distance of the path drawn off

the correct path, and the histogram of the difference

from the correct path in the DecisionNavi-Task and

SequentialNavi-Task is shown in Figure 4.

In the SequentialNavi-Task, more than half of the

participants were able to reproduce the correct path

with a difference of less than 25 mm, while in the

DecisionNavi-Task, the participants were mostly dis-

tributed in the ”difference between 25 mm and 50

mm” and ”difference between 50 mm and 100 mm”

categories. This indicates that the SequentialNavi-

Task reproduced the correct path relatively well. To

verify this result, a corresponding t-test was con-

ducted on the difference from the correct path. The re-

sults showed that the group using the proposed system

had a signiﬁcantly smaller difference from the correct

path than the group using the conventional naviga-

tion system (t(20) = 2.23, p = .037). Furthermore,

when asked to indicate correct travel directions at

three intersections, the SequentialNavi-Task resulted

in a signiﬁcantly higher percentage of correct answers

(Wilcoxon signed-rank test, z = 2.22, p = .033).

These ﬁndings collectively suggest that our se-

quential information presentation method effectively

Integration of Aggregated Information and Subjective Experience Through Sequential Information Presentation

417

connected participants’ subjective travel experiences

with objective environmental information. By provid-

ing contextual and landmark information throughout

the route, not just at decision points, we were able to

promote a more comprehensive understanding of the

urban space. This approach addresses the limitations

of conventional navigation systems that often lead to

reduced spatial comprehension and route memory.

5 DISCUSSION

This study examined the impact of route guidance

with sequential information presentation on the user’s

ability to grasp geospatial information and on reduc-

ing the user’s mental workload for navigation. Ex-

perimental results showed that the proposed method

was superior in several important respects compared

to voice guidance that presents navigation at locations

requiring action decisions.

The signiﬁcant differences found in the subjec-

tive evaluation measures of ”organizing information”

and ”understanding urban space” suggest that the pro-

posed method may promote spatial cognition. This

is consistent with the contribution of landmarks to

spatial memory formation noted by Sorrows & Hir-

tle (1999) (Sorrows and Hirtle, 1999), and supports

the promotion effect of spatial conﬁguration under-

standing shown in the study by May et al. (2003)

(May et al., 2003). Signiﬁcant differences were

also observed in the objective evaluation measures

of path reproduction and directional judgment, sug-

gesting that the proposed method contributes to ac-

tual spatial memory and directional sense. It is pos-

sible that the proposed method can alleviate to some

extent the decline in spatial grasp when using naviga-

tion systems, as pointed out by Ishikawa et al. (2008)

(Ishikawa et al., 2008). These results suggest that the

proposed method is effective in improving geospatial

understanding and memory by effectively linking the

user’s subjective travel experience and objective envi-

ronmental information.

The signiﬁcant difference in the ”Mental work-

load” item indicates that the proposed method has the

potential to reduce users’ mental workload. This sug-

gests the possibility of reducing the increased men-

tal workload of using mobile maps reported by Willis

(2005) (Willis et al., 2009). Signiﬁcant differences in

the ”Surrounding environment” and ”Passive feeling”

items indicate that the proposed method promotes ac-

tive environmental awareness. This suggests that the

proposed method may improve the decreased atten-

tion to the environment when using the navigation

system, which was pointed out in previous studies

unzer et al., 2006; Willis et al., 2009; Huang et al.,

2012). The signiﬁcantly lower immersiveness of the

proposed method suggests that the proposed method

reduces this problem while still providing an effective

spatial understanding.

Meanwhile, the lack of signiﬁcant differences in

”Direction understanding ” is inconsistent with the re-

sults of the study by Raubal & Winter (2002) (Raubal

and Winter, 2002). This may be due to the simplic-

ity of the road structure in the experimental environ-

ment. Veriﬁcation in a more complex environment is

needed.

There are some of the limitations and future works

of this study. The ﬁrst relates to the experimental en-

vironment. As this experiment was conducted in a

virtual urban environment, it is necessary to verify the

effectiveness of the proposed system in a real urban

environment. In a real urban environment, there are

many factors to consider, such as trafﬁc conditions

and weather conditions, so the effectiveness of the

proposed system in more complex situations needs to

be veriﬁed. The second concerns the design of the

navigation system. In this study, the system’s inter-

face had only the minimum elements for navigation.

In addition, the behaviour of the navigation agents

was only a rule-based output of general behaviour. It

is necessary to consider ways of presenting informa-

tion that are tailored to the attributes of the user and

the characteristics of the task. For example, it is nec-

essary to select the most appropriate information pre-

sentation method according to the user and situation,

such as when visual or auditory information presenta-

tion is more effective. The third concerns data acqui-

sition. The only experimental participants in this ex-

periment were university students. In order to verify

the effects on users of different ages and experiences,

it is necessary to conduct the experiment on a wide

range of people. It is hoped that addressing these is-

sues will reﬁne the proposed method and lead to the

development of a practical pedestrian navigation sys-

tem.

6 CONCLUSION

This study investigates the effects of sequential infor-

mation presentation in pedestrian navigation on users’

spatial cognitive abilities, in particular their geospa-

tial understanding, and on their mental workload of

navigation. To achieve this objective, we proposed

a method for sequentially presenting information on

the surrounding area, even at points where no action

decision is required, where information provision is

limited in conventional navigation systems, and veri-

ICAART 2025 - 17th International Conference on Agents and Artiﬁcial Intelligence

418

ﬁed its effectiveness through experiments in a virtual

urban environment.

The experimental results suggest that the proposed

system is effective in improving users’ spatial under-

standing and memory compared to conventional nav-

igation. This result was supported by both the ques-

tionnaire, a subjective evaluation measure, and the

path drawing and direction selection tasks, an objec-

tive evaluation measure. The sequential presentation

of information is thought to promote spatial cognition

by drawing the user’s attention to the environment and

facilitating the mapping between navigation informa-

tion and subjective experience. Furthermore, the pro-

posed system has been suggested to reduce user anx-

iety about navigation. This is thought to be a result

of the sequential presentation of information, which

encouraged users to actively seek information and ac-

tively participate in the navigation task. The sequen-

tial information presentation is an effective means of

supporting users’ spatial cognitive abilities and has

the potential to make travelling in urban environments

safer and more comfortable.

REFERENCES

Anacta, V. J. A., Schwering, A., Li, R., and Muenzer,

S. (2017). Orientation information in wayﬁnding in-

structions: evidences from human verbal and visual

instructions. GeoJournal, 82:567–583.

Barsalou, L. W. (2008). Grounded cognition. Annu. Rev.

Psychol., 59(1):617–645.

Caduff, D. and Timpf, S. (2008). On the assessment of

landmark salience for human navigation. Cognitive

processing, 9:249–267.

Huang, H., Schmidt, M., and Gartner, G. (2012). Spatial

knowledge acquisition with mobile maps, augmented

reality and voice in the context of gps-based pedes-

trian navigation: Results from a ﬁeld test. Cartogra-

phy and Geographic Information Science, 39(2):107–

116.

Ishikawa, T., Fujiwara, H., Imai, O., and Okabe, A.

(2008). Wayﬁnding with a gps-based mobile navi-

gation system: A comparison with maps and direct

experience. Journal of environmental psychology,

28(1):74–82.

Ishikawa, T. and Montello, D. R. (2006). Spatial knowl-

edge acquisition from direct experience in the envi-

ronment: Individual differences in the development

of metric knowledge and the integration of separately

learned places. Cognitive psychology, 52(2):93–129.

Janzen, G. and Van Turennout, M. (2004). Selective neu-

ral representation of objects relevant for navigation.

Nature neuroscience, 7(6):673–677.

May, A. J., Ross, T., Bayer, S. H., and Tarkiainen, M. J.

(2003). Pedestrian navigation aids: information re-

quirements and design implications. Personal and

Ubiquitous Computing, 7:331–338.

Montello, D. R. (1998). A new framework for understand-

ing the acquisition of spatial knowledge in large-scale

environments. Spatial and temporal reasoning in geo-

graphic information systems, pages 143–154.

unzer, S., Zimmer, H. D., and Baus, J. (2012). Naviga-

tion assistance: a trade-off between wayﬁnding sup-

port and conﬁgural learning support. Journal of ex-

perimental psychology: applied, 18(1):18.

unzer, S., Zimmer, H. D., Schwalm, M., Baus, J., and

Aslan, I. (2006). Computer-assisted navigation and

the acquisition of route and survey knowledge. Jour-

nal of environmental psychology, 26(4):300–308.

Raubal, M. and Winter, S. (2002). Enriching wayﬁnd-

ing instructions with local landmarks. In International

conference on geographic information science, pages

243–259. Springer.

Rehrl, K., H

ausler, E., and Leitinger, S. (2010). Compar-

ing the effectiveness of gps-enhanced voice guidance

for pedestrians with metric-and landmark-based in-

struction sets. In Geographic Information Science: 6th

International Conference, GIScience 2010, Zurich,

Switzerland, September 14-17, 2010. Proceedings 6,

pages 189–203. Springer.

Richter, K.-F. and Winter, S. (2014). Landmarks. Springer

Cham Heidelberg New York Dordrecht London. doi,

10(978-3):1.

Ross, T., May, A., and Thompson, S. (2004). The use

of landmarks in pedestrian navigation instructions and

the effects of context. In Mobile Human-Computer

Interaction-MobileHCI 2004: 6th International Sym-

posium, MobileHCI, Glasgow, UK, September 13-16,

2004. Proceedings 6, pages 300–304. Springer.

Schwering, A., Li, R., and Anacta, V. J. A. (2013). Orien-

tation information in different forms of route instruc-

tions. In Short paper proceedings of the 16th AGILE

conference on geographic information science, Leu-

ven, Belgium.

Siegel, A. (1975). The development of spatial representa-

tions of large-scale environments. Advances in Child

Development and Behavior/Academic Press.

Smith, S. M. and Vela, E. (2001). Environmental context-

dependent memory: A review and meta-analysis. Psy-

chonomic bulletin & review, 2001:203–220.

Sorrows, M. E. and Hirtle, S. C. (1999). The nature of

landmarks for real and electronic spaces. In Spa-

tial Information Theory. Cognitive and Computational

Foundations of Geographic Information Science: In-

ternational Conference COSIT’99 Stade, Germany,

August 25–29, 1999 Proceedings 4, pages 37–50.

Springer.

Stankiewicz, B. J. and Kalia, A. A. (2007). Acquistion of

structural versus object landmark knowledge. Journal

of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and

Performance, 33(2):378.

Tulving, E. and Thomson, D. M. (1973). Encoding speci-

ﬁcity and retrieval processes in episodic memory. Psy-

chological review, 80(5):352.

Willis, K. S., H

olscher, C., Wilbertz, G., and Li, C. (2009).

A comparison of spatial knowledge acquisition with

maps and mobile maps. Computers, Environment and

Urban Systems, 33(2):100–110.

Integration of Aggregated Information and Subjective Experience Through Sequential Information Presentation

419