Becoming proficient at navigation in urban environments is something that we all aspire to. Here we asked whether being an expert at wayfinding in one environment has any effect on learning new spatial layouts. Licensed London taxi drivers are among the most proficient urban navigators, training for many years to find their way around a complex and irregularly-laid out city. We first tested how well they could learn the layout of an unfamiliar town compared with a group of non-taxi drivers. Second, we investigated how effectively taxi drivers could integrate a new district into their existing spatial representation of London. We found that taxi drivers were significantly better than control participants at executing routes through the new town, and representing it at a map-like survey level. However, the benefits of navigational expertise were not universal. Compared with their performance in the new town, taxi drivers were significantly poorer at learning the layout of a new area that had to be integrated with their existing knowledge of London. We consider reasons for this picture of facilitation and limitation, in particular drawing parallels with how knowledge acquisition occurs in the context of expertise in general.

中文翻译：

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导航专业知识对新环境中寻路的影响

精通城市环境中的导航是我们所有人都向往的。在这里，我们询问成为一个环境中的寻路专家是否对学习新的空间布局有任何影响。持有执照的伦敦出租车司机是最熟练的城市导航员之一，他们接受了多年的培训，以在复杂且布局不规则的城市中寻找出路。我们首先测试了与一群非出租车司机相比，他们对陌生城镇布局的了解程度。其次，我们调查了出租车司机如何有效地将新区整合到他们现有的伦敦空间表征中。我们发现出租车司机在执行穿越新城镇的路线以及在类似地图的调查层面上表现出来的表现明显优于对照组。然而，导航专业知识的好处并不普遍。与他们在新城区的表现相比，出租车司机在学习必须与他们现有的伦敦知识相结合的新区域布局方面明显较差。我们考虑了这种促进和限制的原因，特别是将知识获取与一般专业知识背景下的知识获取方式相提并论。