The work package “Causes and Mechanisms of Invidualization” is explored at the Institute for Geoinformatics. We analyse the behavioural data of primary school children when navigating and exploring different environments. For this purpose, we first developed a GeoGame that records and evaluates spatio-temporal movement data and interaction data with the application. In a first study with 96 people between the ages of 6 and 13, the participants had to solve various map-reading and navigation tasks in a virtual world (see figure).

The generated data was analysed in a further step with the help of an algorithm that examined the paths chosen to solve the tasks on the basis of pure position data, but also of so-called semantic data (provided by the environment), in order to identify commonalities and individual differences. Two articles have already been published in this context.