User:L.T. Dang/sandbox

Cognitive maps in individuals with spatial anxiety

Self-reported spatial anxiety is negatively correlated with performance in spatial tasks, both small-scale – as assessing mental rotation, spatial visualization; and large scale – as environment learning, with participants scoring higher in spatial anxiety scale showing lowered performance. Spatial anxiety is also negatively correlated navigation proficiency ratings on the self-reported sense of direction measures , as well as orientation (map based) and route (egocentric) strategies. Additionally, as anxiety has been shown to influence performance on tasks that utilize working memory resources, working memory is bound to be affected by spatial anxiety, especially visuo-spatial working memory.

There has been evidence demonstrating the negative relationship between spatial anxiety and environmental learning ability. For example, spatial anxiety is found to induce more errors in directional pointing tasks. In an experiment where participants were required to use directional instructions to move a toy car in a virtual three-dimensional environment, those with higher reported spatial anxiety performed with less accuracy. As spatial anxiety increases, pointing accuracy decreases, and navigation errors increase significantly.

Moreover, spatial anxiety has been shown to relate to gender differences in spatial abilities. Generally, women report higher levels of spatial anxiety than men. The use of orientation (based on map view) strategies in indoor or/and outdoor environment can be associated with lower levels of spatial anxiety. Women tend to report using route strategies more than orientation strategies, whereas men report the opposite. Spatial anxiety also contributes to gender differences in environment learning. Recent findings in university students indicate that men rely more than women upon distal gradient cues that provide information on both orientation and direction (i.e., hill lines) whereas women depend upon proximal pinpoint (i.e., landmark) cues more than other cue types when identifying a visual scene. The addition of an exogenous stressor would differentially alter the impact of spatial anxiety on performance in men and women by producing a higher perception of stress in women than males, which results in decreasing performance in females. The findings suggest that gender differences in distal gradient and new cue perception varied based on stress condition.

Some studies have discovered that acute stress can reduce memory for spatial locations, and people reporting difficulties in memorizing landmarks and directions when they are displaced also report higher levels of spatial anxiety. In addition, it has been demonstrated that people with Agoraphobia Disorder have reduced visuo-spatial working memory when they are required to process multiple spatial elements simultaneously. Specifically, in tasks where they were required to navigate using the landmarks independent of themselves (allocentric coordinates), visuo-spatial working memory deficits were shown to hinder their performance.

Possible explanations for the negative correlation between spatial anxiety and the ability to form cognitive map include: individuals lacking sense of their own position with respect to the external environment are more likely to get anxious when faced with unplanned navigation, and the anxiety about becoming lost itself may reduce the ability to attend to cues necessary for way-finding strategizing.

The influence of spatial anxiety can be counteracted by positive beliefs, such as spatial self-efficacy and confidence (i.e. as the belief that one will do well in cognitive tasks). For example, it has been demonstrated that confidence was a predictive factor for accuracy in mental rotation tasks, with participants being more accurate when they were more confident. When this factor was manipulated, the performance was significantly affected. Furthermore, having more self-perception of spatial self-efficacy has a positive role in supporting environment learning beyond the role of gender.