title: Variations in cognitive maps: understanding individual differences in navigation.
abstract: There are marked individual differences in the formation of cognitive maps both in the real world and in virtual environments (VE; e.g., Blajenkova, Motes, & Kozhevnikov, 2005; Chai & Jacobs, 2010; Ishikawa & Montello, 2006; Wen, Ishikawa, & Sato, 2011). These differences, however, are poorly understood and can be difficult to assess except by self-report methods. VEs offer an opportunity to collect objective data in environments that can be controlled and standardized. In this study, we designed a VE consisting of buildings arrayed along 2 separated routes, allowing for differentiation of between-route and within-route representation. Performance on a pointing task and a model-building task correlated with self-reported navigation ability. However, for participants with lower levels of between-route pointing, the Santa Barbara Sense of Direction scale (Hegarty, Richardson, Montello, Lovelace, & Subbiah, 2002) did not predict individual differences in accuracy when pointing to buildings within the same route. Thus, we confirm the existence of individual differences in the ability to construct a cognitive map of an environment, identify both the strengths and the potential weaknesses of self-report measures, and isolate a dimension that may help to characterize individual differences more completely. The VE designed for this study provides an objective behavioral measure of navigation ability that can be widely used as a research tool.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Temple University.
authors.forename: Steven M
authors.identifier: 0000-0001-7003-6082
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Weisberg
authors.affiliation: Department of Humanities, ETH Zurich.
authors.forename: Victor R
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-2345-2806
authors.initials: VR
authors.lastname: Schinazi
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Temple University.
authors.forename: Nora S
authors.initials: NS
authors.lastname: Newcombe
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Temple University.
authors.forename: Thomas F
authors.initials: TF
authors.lastname: Shipley
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania.
authors.forename: Russell A
authors.initials: RA
authors.lastname: Epstein
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007206:Individuality; D008297:Male; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology*; D065854:Spatial Navigation / Q000502:physiology*; D065855:Spatial Processing / Q000502:physiology; D014584:User-Computer Interface; D055815:Young Adult