title: What makes a route appear longer? An experimental perspective on features, route segmentation, and distance knowledge.
abstract: Five experiments performed in a desktop virtual-reality setting investigated the influence of environmental features--that is, noticeable landmarks along the route--on distance estimation. Landmarks were of two types: Either they simply "filled" the route or they "filled" and also segmented it, thereby inducing a hierarchical structuring of the route. Previous research had left the question open of whether a filling or a segmenting feature leads to an overestimation of a distance along the route. Our experiments showed different results dependent on the kind of space: If an environment was learned from a route perspective, filling and segmenting environmental features led to overestimations of distances, while the segmenting of a route induced by a grouping of similar features did not. If the environment was learned from a map that afforded a survey perspective, route structuring induced through a segmenting feature or by phenomenal grouping led to an overestimation of distances, whereas features that merely filled the route did not.
authors.affiliation: Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany. Petra.jansen-osmann@uni-duesseldorf.de
authors.forename: Petra
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Jansen-Osmann
authors.forename: Bettina
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Berendt
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D004215:Distance Perception; D005260:Female; D005364:Field Dependence-Independence; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009903:Optical Illusions; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011601:Psychophysics; D014584:User-Computer Interface