Much of our day-to-day wayfinding behaviour takes place in familiar large-scale urban environments, yet there is a dearth of studies examining how wayfinding unfolds on a second-by-second basis in this context. Here we used a retrospective verbal report protocol, eye tracking and a highly accurate virtual reality simulation of a real city (London, UK) to examine this issue. Subjects, who were taxi drivers, were able to produce extremely detailed accounts of what they had been thinking during wayfinding, which were validated by independent eye-tracking data. There was a high degree of consistency in the types of thoughts across subjects, permitting classification into a number of distinct categories. Moreover, it was possible to quantify the number of thoughts in each category, their durations and temporal order. Detailed analysis of the verbal reports provided new insights into the processes and strategies involved, and highlighted a greater range of thoughts than has previously been reported in studies of wayfinding. By analysing the temporal order of thoughts it was possible to identify specific relationships between categories. Some of these relationships were predicted by current cognitive models of wayfinding, others were novel, thus shedding new light on how navigation unfolds in a busy city.

中文翻译：

---

寻路过程中认知的动态本质

我们的大部分日常寻路行为都发生在熟悉的大型城市环境中，但缺乏研究如何在这种情况下逐秒展开。在这里，我们使用回顾性口头报告协议、眼动追踪和真实城市（英国伦敦）的高精度虚拟现实模拟来研究这个问题。作为出租车司机的受试者能够非常详细地描述他们在寻路过程中的想法，并通过独立的眼动追踪数据进行验证。跨学科的思想类型高度一致，允许将其分为许多不同的类别。此外，可以量化每个类别中的想法数量、持续时间和时间顺序。口头报告的详细分析为所涉及的过程和策略提供了新的见解，并突出了比以前在寻路研究中报告的更广泛的思想。通过分析思想的时间顺序，可以确定类别之间的特定关系。其中一些关系是由当前的寻路认知模型预测的，另一些是新颖的，从而为导航如何在繁忙的城市中展开提供了新的思路。