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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Environmental Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1541363
Remembering Routes: Confronting Spatial Behaviours and Sketch Maps in Individual and Collective Contexts
Provisionally accepted- 1 Université de Bretagne Occidentale, Brest, France
- 2 Institut Universitaire de France, Paris, France
- 3 Université Panthéon Sorbonne, Paris, Ile-de-France, France
This exploratory study addresses the following question: Is there an explanatory relationship between the chronological sequence in which individuals explore an environment and the way they subsequently draw a sketch map of that same environment? To answer it, we conducted a navigation experiment in La Plaine Saint-Denis (France) involving 118 participants tracked in real time, and divided into three groups: (1) solo exploration without instruments; (2) solo exploration with a mobile map; (3) collective exploration through a dedicated application. The comparison of the tracking data with the videos of the sketch map making shows that Group 1 participants drew the places they visited in the chronological order of their exploration. This tendency is less significant in Group 2, and absent in Group 3, suggesting that in the absence of a map and/or collective interactions, individuals who draw a sketch map tend to recall the route they have just taken.
Keywords: Collective interactions, Landmarks, navigation, Sketch maps, Spatial behaviours, temporality
Received: 07 Dec 2024; Accepted: 04 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 QUESNOT and GUELTON. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Teriitutea QUESNOT, Université de Bretagne Occidentale, Brest, France
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