Communicating Environmental Knowledge

Abstract

The impact of verbal and spatial abilities on the communication of route information was investigated using a two-part procedure. Initially, subjects were selected for inclusion in four groups based on their combination of spatial and verbal abilities. Subsequently, the performance of high spatial-high verbal, high spatial-low verbal, low spatial-high verbal, and low spatial-low verbal subjects was measured on tasks requiring the comprehension and production of route directions. No differences were found with regard to subjects' abilities to comprehend route directions. However, the results suggested that spatial abilities are very important in the production of efficient route directions and that verbal abilities are related to subjects' tendency to conform to certain proposed linguistic conventions regarding the communication of route knowledge.