Route Planning in Hierarchically Structured Environments: From Places to Regions

The structure of human spatial memory has been studied using a wide variety of experimental paradigms. In regionalized environments distance- and directional-judgments, spatial priming- and recall-procedures produce systematic distortions (Hirtle & Jonides, 1985; Mc-Namara, 1986; Stevens & Coupe, 1978). These results led to the hierarchical theories of spatial representations that propose that spatial memory is structured, depending on physical properties and subjective evaluation of space. This structure can be expressed in a graph like representation of space in which places are grouped together to regions that form super ordinate nodes. Here we present three experiments that reveal an influence of environmental regions on human route planning behaviour. Furthermore we propose a route planning heuristic that could account for the observed effects