Extended insights into the landmark attraction effect : the role of semantic salience, multiple landmarks, and additional spatial reference points

Human spatial perception and memory is systematically distorted by cognitive biases. One of these biases, the landmark attraction effect, causes object locations to be memorized closer to nearby landmarks than they actually are. In two consecutive studies, we replicated and extended findings on this cognitive bias. Memorized object locations in maps were found to be systematically distorted toward nearby landmark pictograms. However, the landmark attraction effect becomes more complex if more than one landmark pictogram is available near a to-be-learned object location. In these cases, landmark pictograms appear to compete for the role as the most relevant spatial reference point. We found first indications that the meaningfulness (ability to understand what a pictogram represents) of landmark pictograms and their resulting semantic salience play a role in the selection of one specific landmark pictogram as the most relevant spatial reference point. However, semantic salience appears to play only a subordinate role for the landmark attraction effect. The availability of multiple landmark representations and other spatial reference points in a map was found to interfere with the occurrence of the landmark attraction effect and, consequentially, the potential of semantic salience to affect this cognitive bias. Based on these findings, potential map design approaches could be developed to reduce spatial memory distortions caused by the landmark attraction effect. Suggested approaches comprise the use of increased map content (complexity), the display of additional landmark pictograms around relevant map locations or deliberately triggering cognitive biases that cancel out the landmark attraction effect.