How Navigational Aids Impair Spatial Memory: Evidence for Divided Attention

Gardony, Aaron L.; Brunyé, Tad T.; Mahoney, Caroline R.; Taylor, Holly A.

doi:10.1080/13875868.2013.792821

Cited by 114 publications

(116 citation statements)

References 78 publications

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“…Although both technologies both appear to be effective at helping a user arrive at a desired location, users had a poorer memory for the environment after the task when verbal instructions were provided, presumably because of the additional cognitive processing. Similarly, Gardony, Brunye, Mahoney, and Taylor (2013) suggest that visual aids impair spatial memory specifically by dividing one’s attention between the navigation task and spatial learning while navigating. Together with the findings from the current work, it is likely that a device that offloads attentional demands as opposed to bombarding the user with additional information to process is the appropriate solution for a low vision individual who is already faced with increased attention costs.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatial learning while navigating with severely degraded viewing: The role of attention and mobility monitoring.

Rand¹,

Creem-Regehr²,

Thompson³

2015

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

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The ability to navigate without getting lost is an important aspect of quality of life. In five studies, we evaluated how spatial learning is affected by the increased demands of keeping oneself safe while walking with degraded vision (mobility monitoring). We proposed that safe low-vision mobility requires attentional resources, providing competition for those needed to learn a new environment. In Experiments 1 and 2 participants navigated along paths in a real-world indoor environment with simulated degraded vision or normal vision. Memory for object locations seen along the paths was better with normal compared to degraded vision. With degraded vision, memory was better when participants were guided by an experimenter (low monitoring demands) versus unguided (high monitoring demands). In Experiments 3 and 4, participants walked while performing an auditory task. Auditory task performance was superior with normal compared to degraded vision. With degraded vision, auditory task performance was better when guided compared to unguided. In Experiment 5, participants performed both the spatial learning and auditory tasks under degraded vision. Results showed that attention mediates the relationship between mobility-monitoring demands and spatial learning. These studies suggest that more attention is required and spatial learning is impaired when navigating with degraded viewing.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatial learning while navigating with severely degraded viewing: The role of attention and mobility monitoring.

Rand¹,

Creem-Regehr²,

Thompson³

2015

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

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“…Using GPS removes these requirements and renders navigation less cognitively demanding. In fact, people who travel along given routes using GPS gain less knowledge about those routes compared to people who travel the same routes without an aid, using a map, or after being guided by an experimenter [1][2][3][4][5] . However, no studies have looked at whether GPS use has long-term effects on our internal navigation system, when we are required to find our way without a navigation aid.…”

Section: Habitual Use Of Gps Negatively Impacts Spatial Memory Duringmentioning

confidence: 99%

Habitual use of GPS negatively impacts spatial memory during self-guided navigation

Dahmani

Bohbot

2020

Sci Rep

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study, we sought to determine whether individuals with greater GPS habits rely more on stimulus-response strategies and less on spatial memory strategies when they are required to navigate without GPS, and whether they have poorer cognitive mapping abilities and landmark encoding. We then performed a three-year follow-up in which we retested a small subset of participants. This longitudinal session served to investigate whether GPS use has a negative impact on the various spatial memory facets over time. Methods participants. Sixty healthy young adults between the ages of 19 and 35 participated in the cross-sectional study. Participants were required to be right-handed and to have no history of neurological or psychiatric disorders, or of alcohol or drug abuse. Additionally, they had to have no history of head trauma followed by a loss of consciousness. At the time of recruitment, participants had to be local regular drivers, defined as driving at least 4 days a week in Montreal, Canada. We had no requirements for GPS use, as the majority of participants used GPS at least once a week. To reduce the potential influence of outliers, we excluded individuals with values three standard deviations away from the mean. We chose this conservative threshold as our sample was comprised of healthy young adults. One outlier was found in terms of lifetime GPS experience. No outliers were found in terms of the other GPS habits we measured, i.e. hours of GPS use since pre-test, sense of GPS dependence, or GPS reliance (see Questionnaires section). Of the 60 individuals who participated, ten were excluded: six were not regular drivers, two were not motivated and did not learn or complete the tasks, one was ambidextrous, and one was an outlier in terms of lifetime GPS experience. Fifty participants were included in the cross-sectional study (18 women, 32 men; mean age: 27.6 ± 4.5 years old; see Table 1 for demographic information). All 50 participants were invited for a long-term follow-up session. This session was unplanned and therefore participants had not initially agreed to return for a follow-up. Given that the sample was primarily undergraduate students, many participants were unreachable or had moved away from the city three years after initial testing, and therefore a small subset of 13 participants (4 women, 9 men; mean age: 28.46 ± 3.93 years old; Table 1) came back for a follow-up assessment (mean delay between pre-and post-testing = 3.23 ± 0.50 years). Men and women did not differ on any of the GPS measures. One participant in the cross-sectional study did not do the CSDLT due to lack of time. At baseline, the longitudinal sample did not differ from the remaining participants in the cross-sectional sample in terms of demographics, GPS variables, SBSOD, or navigation variables (independent samples t-tests: all Bootstrap BCa 95% CI crossed 0; Chi-square test for difference in proportion of men and women: p > 0.05). The Institutional Review Board of the Douglas Mental Health University Institute approved the study and al...

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“…Does spatial knowledge acquisition deteriorate when people rely on mobile navigation assistance, as prior studies suggest (e.g., Gardony et al 2013)? If yes, does it relate to disengagement from the navigated environment (Leshed et al 2008), and/or from the wayfinding decision-making process (Bakdash et al 2008)?…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 65%

“…Willis et al 2009). The consequences of automated guidance seem to be a disengagement of navigators' attention from their surroundings (Gardony et al 2013), and split attention between mobile device and the traversed environment (Willis et al 2009). …”

Section: Balancing Assistance and Engagementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatiotemporal enabled Content-based Image Retrieval

Belgiu¹,

Sudmanns²,

Tiede³

et al. 2016

GIScience

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Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are widely used for monitoring and observation of dynamic phenomena. A sensor in WSNs covers only a limited region, depending on its sensing and communicating ranges, as well as the environment configuration. For efficient deployment of sensors in a WSN the coverage estimation is a critical issue. Probabilistic methods are among the most accurate models proposed for sensor coverage estimation. However, most of these methods are based on raster representation of the environment for coverage estimation which limits their quality. In this paper, we propose a probabilistic method for estimation of the coverage of a sensor network based on 3D vector representation of the environment.

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How Navigational Aids Impair Spatial Memory: Evidence for Divided Attention

Cited by 114 publications

References 78 publications

Spatial learning while navigating with severely degraded viewing: The role of attention and mobility monitoring.

Spatial learning while navigating with severely degraded viewing: The role of attention and mobility monitoring.

Habitual use of GPS negatively impacts spatial memory during self-guided navigation

Spatiotemporal enabled Content-based Image Retrieval

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