Wayfinding Strategies in Behavior and Language: A Symmetric and Interdisciplinary Approach to Cognitive Processes
Thora Tenbrink, University of Bremen, and Jan M. Wiener, Collège de France

We present an interdisciplinary approach to the investigation of strategies
and heuristics reflecting the cognitive processes underlying human wayfinding.
To achieve this, we symmetrically investigate navigation behavior and associated
language. This novel approach combines two completely different and
independent directions of research that complement each other naturally and necessarily,
but which have seldom been directly combined so far. The current focus
on wayfinding strategies and heuristics is a fairly new scientific goal both in behavioral
and linguistic research areas; also, the methods of discourse analysis
have rarely been directly adopted to systematically investigate parallels between
natural discourse and navigation behavior. In this paper, we outline and motivate
our approach and present first results gained in combined empirical investigation.