How Subdimensions of Salience Influence Each Other. Comparing Models Based on Empirical Data

Theories about salience of landmarks in GIScience have been evolving for about 15 years. This paper empirically analyses hypotheses about the way different subdimensions (visual, structural, and cognitive aspects, as well as prototypicality and visibility in advance) of salience have an impact on each other. The analysis is based on empirical data acquired by means of an in-situ survey (360 objects, 112 participants). It consists of two parts: First, a theory-based structural model is assessed using variance-based Structural Equation Modeling. The results achieved are, second, corroborated by a data-driven approach, i.e. a tree-augmented naive Bayesian network is learned. This network is used as a structural model input for further analyses. The results clearly indicate that the subdimensions of salience influence each other

Navigating Your Way! Increasing the Freedom of Choice During Wayfinding

Using navigation assistance systems has become widespread and scholars have tried to mitigate potentially adverse effects on spatial cognition these systems may have due to the division of attention they require. In order to nudge the user to engage more with the environment, we propose a novel navigation paradigm called Free Choice Navigation balancing the number of free choices, route length and number of instructions given. We test the viability of this approach by means of an agent-based simulation for three different cities. Environmental spatial abilities and spatial confidence are the two most important modeled features of our agents. Our results are very promising: Agents could decide freely at more than 50% of all junctions. More than 90% of the agents reached their destination within an average distance of about 125% shortest path length

Empirically Measuring Salience of Objects for Use in Pedestrian Navigation

Humans usually refer to landmarks when they give route directions to pedestrians. One of the reasons why current mobile pedestrian navigation systems do not yet mimic this mode of communication is the lack of available data sources. The usefulness of a crowd-sourced data acquisition approach to overcome this problem has long been mooted. However, to date no empirically sound way of measuring the salience of objects by means of surveys exists. GOAL Given this background, this doctoral work has three goals: 1. To achieve a sound way of measuring salience and its subdimensions, i.e. visibility in advance, cognitive salience, prototypicality, structural salience, and visual salience based on taking dimensions revealed in earlier studies systematically and simultaneously into account. 2. To find subgroups of visual features among the large number of visual attributes known from the literature. 3. To find the most important subdimensions of salience by means of estimating two different structural equation models. Model I is based on assumptions of independence among subdimensions, whereas model II reflects hypotheses of mediation. Taken as a whole, achieving these goals will foster both, the advancement of theories of salience and landmark acquisition methods. METHODOLOGY A large scale, in-situ experiment was implemented, trying to overcome weaknesses of earlier attempts made to estimate salience. An appropriate sample size of buildings and non-buildings was calculated a priori (nobj = 360). Objects were randomly selected based on their geographical coordinates and randomly grouped into nr = 55 routes. Participants were required to rate objects by means of a survey. The questions were derived from empirical evidence found in earlier studies. Each route was walked by two different participants (n = 112), id est (i.e.) two ratings per object were collected for data analysis. FINDINGS Model I and model II were analyzed using PLS Path Modeling and consistent PLS Path Modeling, respectively. The measurement models proposed showed a good fit, although some weaknesses were identified for prototypicality and cognitive salience. Geometrical aspects as well as features like (visual) age turned out to have a stronger impact on visual salience than color. Model I did not yield reasonable structural model results based on consistent Partial Least Squares Path Modeling. Model II, however, showed that visual salience had a very high impact on visibility in advance which, in turn, heavily influenced structural salience. An analysis of the predictive capabilities of model II revealed important, but rather small effects. VALUE OF WORK This doctoral work adds to salience models as well as to its empirical, survey-based, in-situ measurement. The results of the mediation analysis as well as the predictive capabilities of model II suggest that important subdimensions of salience are missing in current theories. Emotional salience and familiarity are identified as two candidate constructs. The structural relationships found during the analysis of model II provide, in combination with the measurement model results, a sound basis to choose important features for surveys which are usable to gain crowd-sourced salience ratings. Furthermore, several important aspects for future studies are identified. These include heterogeneity analyses for different subgroups of users of pedestrian navigation systems as well as local environments different to the historic one used in this study

Not Arbitrary, Systematic! Average-Based Route Selection for Navigation Experiments

While studies on human wayfinding have seen increasing interest, the criteria for the choice of the routes used in these studies have usually not received particular attention. This paper presents a methodological framework which aims at filling this gap. Based on a thorough literature review on route choice criteria, we present an approach that supports wayfinding researchers in finding a route whose characteristics are as similar as possible to the population of all considered routes with a predefined length in a particular area. We provide evidence for the viability of our approach by means of both, synthetic and real-world data. The proposed method allows wayfinding researchers to justify their route choice decisions, and it enhances replicability of studies on human wayfinding. Furthermore, it allows to find similar routes in different geographical areas

Featured Snippets Results in Google Web Search: An Exploratory Study

In this paper authors analyzed 163412 keywords and results with featured snippets collected from localized Polish Google search engine. A method-ology for retrieving data from Google search engine was proposed in terms of obtaining necessary data to study featured snippets. It was observed that almost half of featured snippets (48%) is taken from result on first ranking position. Furthermore, some correlations between prepositions and the most often appearing content words in keywords was discovered. Results show that featured snippets are often taken from trustworthy websites like e.g., Wikipedia and are mainly presented in form of a paragraph. Paragraph can be read by Google Assistant or Home Assistant with voice search. We conclude our findings with discussion and research limitations.Comment: 10 pages, 6 tables, accepted to conference ICMarktech'1

Empirically Measuring Object Saliency for Pedestrian Navigation

In this paper a Structural Equation Model drawing on current theories of salience is empirically tested using a large scale in-situ experiment (no = 366 objects and np = 119 participants). Using estimation methods based on partial least squares strong empirical evidence is found for the ability of the model to predict salience. 72% of the variance present in overall salience can be explained. Formative measurement of visual salience is revealed to be an appropriate way to measure visual salience, as the convergent validity analysis yields a highly significant path coefficient of 0.810. Route related features and visual aspects turn out to be most and equally important to predict overall salience, whereas rather person-related dimensions turn out to be less important. Overall, the model presented provides a reasonable and empirically sound way of measuring salience of objects in a survey-based manner