The second level of knowledge acquired in the process of environmental learning is route knowledge. This form of environmental knowledge is the specific concern of this research and therefore will form the basis on which many hypotheses will be formed. Route knowledge occurs when the knowledge of discrete points in the environment are interconnected to form linear routes through space. As with landmark knowledge, at first the knowledge of individual routes is discrete and is not integrated in any way with spatial information not related to the route in question. This is to say that if knowledge for two or more individual routes exists the individual will be unable to integrate them and make inferences between them.
Route knowledge can occur at a number of scales.
At the lowest level route knowledge is simply known at the ordinal scale, that is to say that the features that are known along it are only known in the order they occur on the route. At this level there is no knowledge of metric distance concerning the space that separates individual landmarks on the route. These ordinal scale concepts are being tested in the distance estimation task. Although I am also measuring distance, ordinal data is also collected concerning the sequence in which subjects placed individual features on a line representing the route. At the lowest level, the route order would only be known in the direction it was initially learned.