Costs of Switching Perspectives in Route and Survey Descriptions

Two experiments examined perspective switching in comprehension and retrieval of spatial information. Participants read route or survey descriptions of environments line by line. Reading times were recorded. For half of the descriptions, the perspective of the last sentence was switched. True/false verification of sentences from both perspectives followed the descriptions. Switching perspective increased reading times but increased verification times only for survey sentences. This suggests that perspective switching exacts a cost in comprehension, but that the cost dissipates after information retrieval, especially for route descriptions. The second study examined which aspects of perspective, viewpoint or terms of reference, accounted for switching costs by using hybrid descriptions. Switching terms of reference slowed reading times more than switching viewpoint. Together, the experiments suggest that switching perspective plays a role in comprehension that diminishes with repeated retrieval. They also point to a fundamental asymmetry between route and survey perspectives, one that depends on orientation.