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Does spatial cognitive style affect how navigational strategy is planned?

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Abstract

People orient themselves in the environment using three different, hierarchically organized, spatial cognitive styles: landmark, route, and survey. Landmark style is based on a representation encompassing only visual information (terrain features); route style is based on a representation that connects landmarks and routes using an egocentric (body-centred) frame of reference; survey style is based on a global map-like representation that mainly involves an allocentric (world-centred) frame of reference. This study was aimed at investigating whether individual spatial cognitive style affected the way to plan a path when searching for a lost object. Participants with landmark, route, and survey style were assessed with an ecological navigational planning task (the Key Search Task), which required planning a strategy to search for the lost key in a hypothetical wide squared field. Results showed that spatial cognitive styles were associated to different navigational planning strategies, although the time to complete the Key Search Task was comparable across the styles. As revealed by the Key Search Task score, survey style individuals were the best navigational planners, route style individuals were less efficient and landmark style individuals were the least efficient. These results suggest that spatial cognitive style has effects on navigational planning. Implications for clinical settings, such as for developmental topographical disorientation, are discussed.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation Unit, IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia, via Ardeatina 306, 00179, Rome, Italy

    Alessia Bocchi, Massimiliano Palmiero & Laura Piccardi

  2. Department of Biotechnological and Applied Clinical Sciences, University of L’Aquila, L’Aquila, Italy

    Massimiliano Palmiero

  3. Department of Psychology, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy

    Raffaella Nori

  4. Aerospace Medicine Department, Italian Air Force Experimental Flight Centre, Pratica di Mare, Pomezia, Italy

    Paola Verde

  5. Department of Life, Health and Environmental Sciences, University of L’Aquila, L’Aquila, Italy

    Laura Piccardi

Authors
  1. Alessia Bocchi
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  2. Massimiliano Palmiero
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  4. Paola Verde
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  5. Laura Piccardi
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Correspondence to Alessia Bocchi.

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Bocchi, A., Palmiero, M., Nori, R. et al. Does spatial cognitive style affect how navigational strategy is planned?. Exp Brain Res 237, 2523–2533 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-019-05609-9

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