wayfinding: one construct, many systems

In psychology, wayfinding is the process of learning and using an internal spatial representation to get from place to place. Edward Tolman's 1948 Cognitive maps in rats and men showed that rats learn the layout of a maze as a map-like whole rather than a fixed chain of turns, taking shortcuts and detours that imply an internal model of space. The referent is goal-directed spatial navigation guided by a learned representation, the same construct that reappears in how people read a city and in how the brain encodes place.[1]

Unit

The accuracy and flexibility of goal-directed navigation using a learned spatial representation

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Tested by shortcut and detour behaviour in mazes that reveals a map-like, not route-bound, representation

In urban design, wayfinding is how people orient and move through a built environment by forming a clear mental image of it. Kevin Lynch's The Image of the City named "way-finding" as the consistent use and organisation of environmental cues to navigate, and tied success to a legible city of paths, edges, districts, nodes, and landmarks. It is the same navigation-by-internal-map construct Tolman found in animals, here realised in human movement through cities and read through residents' mental images rather than maze behaviour.[2]

Unit

How reliably people orient and reach destinations using the environment's image

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Assessed from mental maps, orientation tasks, and the environmental cues people report using to navigate

In neuroscience, wayfinding is grounded in a neural map of space: specific hippocampal neurons ("place cells") fire when an animal is in particular locations, forming a brain-based representation that supports navigation. O'Keefe and Nadel's The Hippocampus as a Cognitive Map proposed that the hippocampus implements exactly the cognitive map Tolman inferred from behaviour. It is the same construct, navigation by an internal spatial representation, now located in neural tissue and measured by recording place-cell activity rather than behaviour or mental sketches.[3]

Unit

The location-specific firing of hippocampal place cells that encodes position

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Recorded as location-specific firing of hippocampal place cells as an animal moves through space