Spatial mental representations derived from survey and route descriptions: When individuals prefer extrinsic frame of reference

The role of spatial abilities and self-assessments in cardinal point orientation across the lifespan

“…spatial abilities) and positive subjective attitudes towards environment knowledge and orientation, which in turn enable people to orient themselves in space. This latter result means that having greater resources in basic cognitive mechanisms (such as WM) facilitates a positive self-assessment (as shown by Baldwin & Reagan, 2009;Meneghetti, Pazzaglia, & De Beni, 2011). WM was also negatively associated with a likelihood of dysfunctional spatial attitudes (i.e.…”

“…Although this is a very quickly-implemented and ecological task, no studies on older adults have examined this ability, while some evidence on young adults encouraged us to adopt this measure because of its relationship with spatial skills. The orientation ability tested using pointing tasks was related to spatial skills recorded with objective tasks like the MRT (Meneghetti, Pazzaglia, & De Beni, 2011) and to spatial selfassessments (Pazzaglia & De Beni, 2006). Hence our interest in examining the relationship between age and environment orientation, and assessing whether intervening variables such as spatial skills and selfassessments, and WM mediate this relationship, as suggested by studies examining new environment learning (Kirasic, 2000).…”

Perspective changing in WalCT and VR-WalCT: A gender difference study [WalCT – VR-WalCT: Gender differences]

“…Indeed, according to Serino and Riva (2015) participants with high ability in using cardinal points (i.e., survey strategy) tend to be less precise in retrieving the spatial locations of objects when they are immersed in a pure egocentric experience, such as in both VR-WalCT and M-WalCT. Moreover, as pointed out by Meneghetti, Pazzaglia, and De Beni (2011) and Nori et al (2006) survey people are able to manage spatial information in both manners, that is considering egocentric and allocentric coordinates, but their preference was the allocentric one. For this reason, females perform better than males both in VR-WalCT and M-WalCT because they are immersed in an ''egocentric'' environment.…”

The role of visual and spatial working memory in forming mental models derived from survey and route descriptions

“…Six spatial texts (adapted from Meneghetti, Pazzaglia et al ., ; Pazzaglia et al ., ) described three fictitious open environments (a nature park, a tourist centre, and a holiday farm) from route and survey perspectives. The descriptions were comparable in difficulty (as previously ascertained by Pazzaglia et al ., ).…”

“…Other studies have revealed, however, that mental models preferentially incorporate the perspective presented in the learning phase, and a cost is associated with switching perspective. Several studies, indeed, showed that participants were more accurate in judging sentences expressed from the same perspective as the one learned (Meneghetti, Borella, Muffato, Pazzaglia & De Beni, ; Meneghetti, Pazzaglia, & De Beni, ; Perrig & Kintsch, ). Various factors may be involved in generating difference between results, but little research has been devoted to the issue to date.…”