Weisberg Steven M, Schinazi Victor R, Newcombe Nora S, Shipley Thomas F, Epstein Russell A
Department of Psychology, Temple University.
Department of Humanities, ETH Zurich.
J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn. 2014 May;40(3):669-682. doi: 10.1037/a0035261. Epub 2013 Dec 23.
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.
在现实世界和虚拟环境（VE）中，认知地图的形成存在显著的个体差异（例如，Blajenkova、Motes和Kozhevnikov，2005年；Chai和Jacobs，2010年；Ishikawa和Montello，2006年；Wen、Ishikawa和Sato，2011年）。然而，除了自我报告方法外，人们对这些差异了解甚少，且难以评估。虚拟环境为在可控且标准化的环境中收集客观数据提供了机会。在本研究中，我们设计了一个虚拟环境，其中的建筑沿着两条分开的路线排列，以便区分路线间和路线内的表征。指向任务和模型构建任务的表现与自我报告的导航能力相关。然而，对于路线间指向水平较低的参与者，圣巴巴拉方向感量表（Hegarty、Richardson、Montello、Lovelace和Subbiah，2002年）并不能预测在同一路线内指向建筑物时的个体准确性差异。因此，我们证实了在构建环境认知地图的能力方面存在个体差异，确定了自我报告测量方法的优势和潜在弱点，并分离出一个可能有助于更全面地表征个体差异的维度。为这项研究设计的虚拟环境提供了一种可广泛用作研究工具的导航能力客观行为测量方法。
