MEMORY AND THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT: ENVIRONMENTAL CUES IN INFORMATION PROCESSING AND NAVIGATION

Gerald Weisman [1] hypothesizes that to the extent an environment provides perceptual access to either interim or ultimate destinations, it facilitates wayfinding and navigation. Environments with elements of physical distinctiveness, or landmarks, also facilitate wayfinding. Additional factors that influence the identification of landmarks might be personal or social significance and patterns of activity. A landmark is represented in a person's cognitive map to the extent the person has invested it with visual, inferred, or functional distinctiveness. There is a long history of research on memory. However, Kirasic [2] suggested that the body of knowledge of research on wayfinding memory does have gaps for information processing in navigation. Birren and Schaie [3] believed cognitive speed, consisting of attention span and processing speed is the most sensitive measure of memory. The following environmental variables play a role environmental cognition: visual access to other areas of the building, physical or functional differentiation of building parts: signage for identification and direction purposes, and plan configuration [1]. Information processing theory assumes that the human information processing system consists of three fundamentally distinct kinds of memory systems: the sensory registers, working memory, and long-term memory. Environmental cognitive factors and design features related to this cognition in the built environment contribute to the design of built environment specifications and wayfinding systems. The purpose of the study is to identify memory of environmental cues in the built environment. More research may be needed to supplement possible gaps in the literature regarding memory of visual design elements, its interaction with wayfinding navigation and its impact on building design. The study investigated two questions regarding memory; the frequency and percent of responses for all participants on memory of environmental cues, and whether or not there was a significant difference between the predictor variables of gender and ethnicity on memory of environmental cues in the built environment. The findings qualify how memory of design features and visual environmental cues aid in information processing and navigation in the built environment. The presentation depicts and explains the design features within the built environment that provide wayfinding assistance and their propensity to provide and provoke memory.