Is Familiarity Reflected in the Spatial Knowledge Revealed by Sketch Maps?

Despite the frequent use of sketch maps in assessing environmental knowledge, it remains unclear how and to what degree familiarity impacts sketch map content. In the present study, we assess whether different levels of familiarity relate to differences in the content and spatial accuracy of environmental knowledge depicted in sketch maps drawn for the purpose of route instructions. To this end, we conduct a real-world wayfinding study with 91 participants, all of whom have to walk along a pre-defined route of approximately 2.3 km length. Prior to the walk, we collect self-report familiarity ratings from participants for both a set of 15 landmarks and a set of areas we define as hexagons along the route. Once participants finished walking the route, they were asked to sketch a map of the route, specifically a sketch that would enable a person who had never walked the route to follow it. We found that participants unfamiliar with the areas along the route sketched fewer features than familiar people did. Contrary to our expectations, however, we found that landmarks were sketched or not regardless of participants’ level of familiarity with the landmarks. We were also surprised that the level of familiarity was not correlated to the accuracy of the sketched order of features along the route, of the position of sketched features in relation to the route, nor to the metric locational accuracy of feature placement on the sketches. These results lead us to conclude that different aspects of feature salience influence whether the features are included on sketch maps, independent of familiarity. They also point to the influence of task context on the content of sketch maps, again independent of familiarity. We propose further studies to more fully explore these ideas.