Landmark-Based Turn-by-Turn Instructions Enhance Incidental Spatial Knowledge Acquisition

The augmentation of landmarks in auditory navigation instructions had been shown to improve incidental spatial knowledge acquisition during assisted navigation. Here, two driving simulator experiments are reported that replicated this effect even when adding a three-week delay between navigation and spatial tasks and varying the degree of detail in the provided landmark information. Performance in free- and cued-recall of landmarks and driving the route again without assistance demonstrated increased landmark and route knowledge when navigating with landmark-based compared to standard instructions. The results emphasize that small changes to existing navigation systems can foster spatial knowledge acquisition during every-day navigation.