Don't get lost in the mall! Characteristics of efficient wayfinding and gaze behavior

Navigation in complex multi-level buildings like shopping malls can be a challenging wayfinding task, especially if the individual is unfamiliar with the building. People need to orient themselves, find reliable landmarks, and develop a mental representation of the environment. For this, different cognitive processes, as well as efficient visual perception, are key. Previous research has found links between visual perception and the quality of mental representation. Research on complex multilevel buildings, however, is missing. To investigate the interaction of visual perception and spatial cognition in such complex buildings, we asked participants (n = 68) to navigate in virtual reality to 10 different shops across four floors of a complex building, revisit 4 of them afterward, and then create a 3D sketchmap of the navigated building. We investigated how the visibility of the goals, being on a wide versus a narrow corridor, would impact wayfinding performance. We measured cognitive load, navigational performance in the search and navigation tasks, and 3D sketchmap quality. We show that wayfinding performance and visual search strategies depend on the type of open spaces in the complex building and that navigation strategies change with increasing spatial knowledge. Our results indicate that there are individual differences in the ability to recognize the visited shops and sketch them in a 3D VR environment. Our results suggest that shops that are visible through large atrium spaces can be found more efficiently when visiting complex buildings for the first time. Once the mental representation of the building has been acquired, navigation performance is even better for shops located on hidden corridors. Our findings highlight the dynamics in creating a mental representation of complex multilevel buildings, how this representation impacts visual search and navigation, and that 3D sketching is a powerful tool for investigating spatial knowledge.