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Abstract

This study examines the working memory systems involved in human wayfinding. In the learning
phase 24 participants learned two routes in a novel photorealistic virtual environment displayed on a 220° screen, while they were disrupted by a visual, a spatial, a verbal or - in a control group - no secondary task. In the following wayfinding phase the participants had to find and to "virtually walk" the two routes again. During this wayfinding phase a number of dependent measures were recorded. We show that encoding wayfinding knowledge interfered with the verbal and with the spatial secondary task. These interferences were even stronger than the interference of wayfinding knowledge with the visual secondary task. These findings are consistent with a dual coding approach of wayfinding knowledge.