The Relationship Between The Different Types of Learning Environments and The Individual Differences in Navigation Abilities

Abstract

The study attempted to determine the relationship between the different environmental learning types and the performance in wayfinding task. The types of learning environments were measured by the Walking Corsi test while the wayfinding task performance was measured by the travel time in finding the target location. The wayfinding task performance was measured three times. Eighty-nine (89) undergraduate students aged between 18-23 years were divided based on the types of learning environments into 3 groups, namely route learning type (31 students), map learning type  (30 students) and verbal learning type   (28 students). The mixed analysis of variance was used to analyze the data. The results showed that there were significant differences in the travel time to find the target location between three types of environmental learning groups F (3.6, 172) = 11.040; p<0.01). In the first occasion, the travel time of the map learning type group was faster than the route learning type group and the verbal learning type group. In the second occasion to track the target location, the travel time of the map learning type group was faster than   route learning type group and the verbal learning type group. In the third occasion, the travel time of the map and verbal instruction learning type group were not different.