title: Turn left where you felt unhappy: how affect influences landmark-based wayfinding.
abstract: The present work investigated the impact of affect in landmark-based wayfinding. We assumed that affect-laden landmarks improve wayfinding performance and have an impact on later landmark recognition. To investigate our hypotheses, we ran two experiments in a virtual maze. In Experiment 1, we investigated how affect-laden landmarks influence wayfinding and recognition in comparison with neutral landmarks. The aim of Experiment 2 was to focus on the affective valence of a landmark. The memory tasks of both experiments were repeated after 1 week in order to assess memory consolidation. Results showed that the best wayfinding and recognition performance occurs when negatively laden landmarks were used. In comparison with neutral and positively laden landmarks, recognition performance hardly decreased over time for the negatively laden landmarks. Our results not only support findings in the field of emotion research but also expand the concept of semantic landmark salience with respect to emotional responses.
authors.affiliation: Experimental Psychology and Cognitive Science, Justus Liebig University Giessen, Otto-Behaghel-Strasse 10 F, 35394, Giessen, Germany. ceylan.z.balaban@psychol.uni-giessen.de.
authors.forename: Ceylan Z
authors.initials: CZ
authors.lastname: Balaban
authors.affiliation: Experimental Psychology and Cognitive Science, Justus Liebig University Giessen, Otto-Behaghel-Strasse 10 F, 35394, Giessen, Germany.
authors.forename: Harun
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Karimpur
authors.affiliation: Department of Social Sciences, University of Applied Sciences Darmstadt, Haardtring 100, 64295, Darmstadt, Germany.
authors.forename: Florian
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Röser
authors.affiliation: Experimental Psychology and Cognitive Science, Justus Liebig University Giessen, Otto-Behaghel-Strasse 10 F, 35394, Giessen, Germany.
authors.forename: Kai
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Hamburger
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; D021641:Recognition, Psychology / Q000502:physiology*; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D013037:Spatial Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D014584:User-Computer Interface; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Affect; Emotion; Semantic landmark salience; Spatial cognition; Visual landmarks; Wayfinding