1. Research Interest

I would like to attend this workshop in order to help formulate a research agenda in the area of cognitive models of navigation. Specifically, I am interested in promoting research on how drivers develop dynamic mental representations of the environment. While there is an extensive body of literature on the spatial learning or cognitive mapping process in general, very little research has focused on how individuals use temporal information in the development of cognitive representations of the environment (Burnett, 1978; MacEachren, 1980; Säisä, Svensson-Gärling, Gärling, & Lindberg, 1986). Since navigation rarely involves traveling at a constant speed, the relationship between distance and time is variable. Therefore, drivers must take into account both distance and time in the development of their mental representation of the environment. Currently, I am conducting a series of human-subject experiments which focuses on how driver’s learn distance -time relationships along a route by varying their speed through a simulated environment.

During the workshop I hope to raise many important theoretical and applied issues and questions concerning how drivers mentally process temporal information and represent routes as dynamic events. Specifically, I hope to discuss the following questions: /P> 1) How is temporal information about a route represented in memory? Do individuals encode temporal information along a route independently of distance information or are distance and time inextricably associated in memory?

2) Which strategies do drivers use to account for a variable distance - time relationship? Do drivers tend to normalize changes in their speed to one constant velocity or are they able accurately compute distances based on their perceived change in speed?

3) Are there systematic biases in distance - time estimations? Do drivers tend to over or under-estimate the time to travel along a route when a change of speed occurs? How might this influence subjective distance estimates?

4) What are the most appropriate techniques for assessing subjective time estimates during navigation? What are the advantages and disadvantages of verbal estimations, time productions, or comparison techniques? Which memory systems are involved with each technique? Is there a potential cognitive or perceptual bias with different techniques?

5) What is the best way temporal information about a route should be presented to the driver? How might the addition of temporal information influence mode choice, route choice, and spatial behavior in general?

References:

Burnett, P. (1978). Time cognition and urban travel behavior. Geografiska Annaler, 60B (2), 107-115.

MacEachren, A. (1980). Travel time as the basis of cognitive distance. Professional Geographer, 32(1), 30-36.

Säisä, J., Svensson-Gärling, A., Gärling, T., & Lindberg, E. (1986). Geographical Analysis, 18(2), 167-174.

At Cambridge Basic Research (CBR), an important thrust of our research has been to extend the traditional human factors perspective on driving by using the concept of "mental models". While mental models are somewhat hard to define, there is a general agreement that they must go beyond traditional concepts of representation in capturing aspects of function and use as well as simply declarative knowledge of a domain. An important aspect of this difference is the idea of representing dynamics. As Moray (1990), has pointed out

Where the current paradigm differs from most route learning studies is in altering the velocity with which the car is driven during different portions of the route. As time-distance relationships are dependent upon velocity, this manipulation allows us to probe both sensitivity to velocity change, but more importantly, the impact that such changes have on internal representations of the environment.

Participants are told to pay attention to all aspects of their journey through the route as their memory for this journey will be tested at a later date. Participants are warned that their velocity may change and that they should try to be aware of such manipulations. Four basic measures are used to assess the mental representations which evolve during this route learning task:

Temporal knowledge is assessed via 3) placement of landmarks on an abstract time scale (assuming the total time of the route is 100 units long), and 4) a "mental navigation" task in which we measure the time taken to "imagine" driving either the whole route or sections of the route. As well as basic time production, an interruption method is also used where a verbal stop signal is used to probe how far a long the route a participant has "mentally driven" during a certain time frame.

1) Develop a paradigm to probe the development and maintenance of temporal as well as spatial knowledge during route learning and navigation tasks. Methodology for probing spatial route learning is already well established (see Kitchin, 1996, for a comprehensive review). I extend this methodology by explicitly probing for temporal information and introduce a "mental navigation" task which has it roots in the mental rotation work of Shepard and his colleagues (e.g. Shepard and Meztler, 1971) and the mental imagery work of Kosslyn and his colleagues (e.g. Kosslyn, 1995).

2) Study the relationship spatial and temporal knowledge in a driving context. This will be achieved by first, measuring the accuracy of distance and time estimations between landmarks, followed by determining if there are any systematic distortions in the distance and time estimations. Secondly, performance will be analyzed on landmarks within the same speed segments and across different speed segments. This analysis will shed light on how well subjects are able to take into account velocity changes in their estimation of distance and time between landmarks. Finally, the mental navigation task will offer insight into the accuracy and detail of their dynamic mental representation of driving.

Overall, I hope to gain a better understanding how drivers develop cognitive models of their environment which include both space and time. This research focus is particularly important since drivers may often select routes based on travel time, rather than distance. There also may be important implications for the design of in-vehicle navigation systems since drivers may be presented both spatial and temporal information about routes.

Freyd, J. J. (1987). Dynamic mental representations. Psychological Review, 94, 427-438.

Golledge, R. G. (1998). Wayfinding Behavior: Cognitive Mapping and Other Spatial Processes. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Hart, R., & Moore, G. (1973). The development of spatial cognition: A review. R. Downs & D. Stea (Eds.), Image and Environment: Cognitive Mapping and Spatial Behavior. Chicago: Aldine Publishing, pp. 246-248.

Jones, M. R. (1976). Time, our lost dimension: Toward a new theory of perception, attention, and memory. Psychological Review, 83, 323-355.

Kitchin, R. M. (1996). Methodological convergence in cognitive mapping research: Investigating configurational knowledge. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 16, 163-185.

Kosslyn, S. (1995). Image and Brain. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Lee, D. N. (1976). A theory of visual control of braking based on information about time-to-collision. Perception, 5, 437-459.

Moray, N. (1990). Designing for transportation safety in the light of perception, attention, and mental models. Ergonomics, 33, 1201-1213.

Piaget, J., & Inhelder, B. (1967). The child’s conception of space. New York: Norton.

Shepard, R. N., & Metzler, J. (1971). Mental rotation of three-dimensional objects. Science, 191, 701-703.

Siegel, A. W., & White, S. H. (1975). The development of spatial representations of large scale environments. In H. Reese (Ed.), Advances in Child Development and Behavior. New York: Academic Press, Vol. 10, pp. 9-55.

Education

Ph.D. Geography, Boston University, Boston, MA, 1998.
Dissertation: "The role of attention in learning spatial relationships during navigation".

M.A. Geography, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, 1990.

B.A. Geography, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, 1988.

Research Interests

Spatial cognition and behavior, human navigation and wayfinding, geographic visualization, geographic information systems, and environmental perception.

Current Position

Post-Doctoral Research Associate, Nissan Cambridge Basic Research, Cambridge, MA, March 1998 - Present.

Relevant Publications

Albert, W.S., Beusmans, J.M., & Rensink, R.A. (In Progress). Representations of vista space in a virtual environment are viewpoint-dependent. To be submitted to Spatial Cognition and Computation.

Albert, W.S., Reinitz, M.T., Beusmans, J.M., & Gopal, S. (Forthcoming). The role of attention in spatial learning during simulated navigation. Environment & Planning A.

Albert, W.S., & Golledge, R.G. (Forthcoming). The use of spatial cognitive abilities in geographical information systems: The map overlay operation. Transactions in GIS.

Albert, W.S. (1997) "The role of spatial abilities in the acquisition and representation of geographic space". In Geographic Information Research: Bridging the Atlantic. Eds: M. Craglia and H. Couclelis, London: Taylor & Francis, pp. 320-334.

Albert, W.S., Beusmans, J.M., & Rensink, R.A. (1997). The effect of spatio-temporal discontinuity on the acquisition of relative direction knowledge. Cambridge Basic Research Technical Report, 97-5, Cambridge, MA.