The Relationship between Emotionally Laden Landmarks, Spatial Abilities, and Personality Traits: An Exploratory Study

Abstract

Separate research lines have shown that the way we process spatial information is influenced by individual factors, such as personality traits and basic spatial abilities. Alongside, recent studies suggest that environmental landmarks can be represented differently depending on their emotional content. However, to our knowledge, no study has addressed so far the issue of whether there is a relationship between individual factors and the way we represent and use spatial information that conveys emotional content. Therefore, this exploratory study aimed to (i) investigate the relationship between personality traits and the use of spatial strategies in relation to emotional stimuli; (ii) investigate if a different pattern emerges according to a body- or object-based spatial encodings. After watching movies of routes characterized by positive, negative, or neutral landmarks, participants performed a “route continuation” (RC, i.e., left/right decision) and a “distance comparison” task (DC, i.e., what was the landmark closest to X?). Furthermore, participants performed a mental rotation task (MR), the Corsi block tapping (CBT), and the Bergen right-left discrimination tests (B-RL). Personality traits were assessed through the Ten Item Personality Inventory (TIPI). Results showed that a better performance at the RC task was associated with higher scores at CBT tasks in the positive condition and at B-RL test and agreeableness scale from TIPI in both positive and neutral conditions. Instead, the MR task positively correlated with the DC task in all conditions. In sum, individuals’ spatial abilities, personality traits, and task requests influenced the way emotionally laden landmarks were memorized.

The Influence of Stimuli Valence and Arousal on Spatio-Temporal Representation of a Route

“…Furthermore, these elements can represent reference points around which the mental representation of the route is built, just like environmental landmarks [ 1 , 2 ]. For this reason, studies suggest that the emotional salience of landmarks is a key dimension to consider when investigating how individuals represent environmental spatial information [ 3 , 4 ]. However, the influence of both valence and arousal of these elements on the mental representations of a route has hardly been explored [ 5 ].…”

Spatial navigation performance in people with multiple sclerosis-a large-scale online study

“…Yet it could result in less accurate information with regard to the clinical details that participants provide, and introduced variability in the hardware used, and other experimental conditions. Also, a factor like current mood could potentially affect subjective cognitive ratings, however, recent evidence suggests that spatial navigation performance is also affected by mood (Ruotolo et al, 2020). Furthermore, a recent analysis of the subjective and objective navigation measures used in the current study shows significant positive correlation between the two measures (van der Ham et al, 2021), Exclusion based on visual impairment also relied on self-report, which could potentially differ from actual level of visual impairment.…”

Learning ability and spatial memory status in rats during the acute period of mild blast-induced traumatic brain injury

“…As a result of observations, it was established that grooming was uncomfortable in rats with bTBI, the animals constantly looked around during this act, were extremely worried, which indicates an anxiety-like state. Given the previously established negative effect of emotional state on spatial memory in rats with different emotional profiles or in diseases [16] we consider that in rats with bTBI, who experienced anxiety according to the grooming index, emotional disturbance affects the process of spatial orientation and the formation of spatial memory. And the increase in the impairment of cognitive functions indicates the exhaustion of compensatory mechanisms and the deterioration of the course of bTBI from the 4th day of the posttraumatic period.…”