Impact of social interactions on the acquisition of spatial knowledge

Résumé En

The rise of online mapping, mobile Internet, and smart devices allows to renew the content analysis of externalized mental maps in the form of sketch maps. Thanks to these technologies, it is now possible to connect physically distant people who move within the same space at the same time. Aims: Our research aimed at evaluating the impact of interactions produced via a shared mapping application on the acquisition of spatial knowledge and its restitution in the form of sketch maps. Methods: Two groups walked freely in the Plaine Saint-Denis district of Paris. Each movement was recorded in real time using a tracking device. Once the exploration finished, the participants were asked to draw on a sheet of paper the environment they had just walked through.•Group 1: 40 people who walked individually without any tools.•Group 2: 8 groups of 5 people interacted with each other (commenting and posting photos about places) using a shared mapping mobile application on which the real-time paths of each walker appeared on a white background.Preliminary results and Conclusion: Preliminary analyses of tracking data and sketch maps show that unlike participants of Group 1, individuals of Group 2 mentioned on their mental maps landmarks that they did not visit during their exploration. In other words, those results suggest that collective interactions seem to have an impact on the process of spatial knowledge acquisition