Landmarks are a special category of structures that are recognised by many people worldwide. They can be natural features like mountains or waterfalls or man-made things like buildings or monuments. Some landmarks are so popular that they’re protected by governments as World Heritage Sites or National Parks.
A landmark is a recognizable feature that stands out from the rest of the environment, typically visible from a distance and used for navigation. It can be natural or built and can be a symbol of a country, region, city, or even an individual.
In general, landmarks are important for human navigation because they help us find our way in space. This is why they’re often a very important part of a map or city plan.
Some landmarks are so important that they become national symbols of a nation or a culture. They can be very big, very old or very cleverly designed.
The most famous landmarks around the world are a lot of fun to see and learn about. Some examples include: Rockefeller Center, the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State Building.
They can also be a very important part of a history or an economy. For example, the Empire State Building is a landmark of New York City and many people visit it to see how impressive it is.
Historically, landmarks were used by explorers to navigate through foreign territory. They were often mountains or trees that could be seen easily from a distance and they helped them find their way.
Nowadays, landmarks are usually man-made or artificial features that are well-known around the world. They might be a bridge or a large building that’s been built using modern technology.
The word ‘landmark’ is derived from a Latin word that means ‘a mark’ and can mean a fixed point of reference or a distinctive piece of land.
We have a great deal of knowledge about landmarks and what they are, but we don’t know much about the people that use them or why they’re so important. We also don’t know much about how the concept of a landmark came to be.
Hence, the purpose of this study was to explore the cognitive and neural processes involved in the ability to recognize and navigate by landmarks. To do this, we examined landmark-specific spatial coding in children and older adults by combining navigational/gaze/cognitive data from a landmark task with post-task questionnaire data.
To test landmark-specific spatial coding, we asked participants to recall the shape of a maze as well as a set of landmarks, which they had to identify on a top-view drawing at the end of the task. We then measured their performance in these tasks with a binary score.
Compared with geometry, landmark-specific spatial coding was more difficult in children and older adults (independent of the strategy they put forward in the subsequent probe tests). We found that landmark-specific spatial coding deficits were related to difficulties in flexibly processing and reasoning about landmark arrays as compared to geometric cues. They were also linked to a reduced capacity to perceive fine details. the landmark