Restructuring the navigational field: individual predisposition towards field independence predicts preferred navigational strategy

Abstract

To successfully navigate within an environment, individuals have to organize the spatial information in terms of salient landmarks, paths and general layout of the navigational environment. They may differ in the strategy they adopt to orientate themselves, with some individuals preferring to use salient landmarks (landmark spatial style, L-SS), others preferring to plan routes or paths through an egocentric strategy in which landmarks are connected with each other (route spatial style, R-SS) and others still create a global map-like configuration of the environment regardless of their own position in the environment (survey spatial style, S-SS). Here, we assessed whether Field independence (FI), that is the extent to which the individual perceives part of a field as discrete from the surrounding field rather than embedded in the field, predicted the individual's spatial style. We assessed the individual's spatial style using the spatial cognitive style test (SCST) and measured FI using the group embedded figure test (GEFT). We found that FI predicted general spatial ability, with a higher level of FI being associated with better performances on the SCST. Also, Field-independent individuals showed a marked preference for an S-SS. These results suggest that a higher level of FI is associated with better performance on higher level spatial tasks (i.e. R-SS and S-SS) that is tasks requiring individuals to restructure the "navigational field" according to the navigational goal. The results also suggest that a higher level of FI makes individuals more prone to use a global and complex map-like representation of the environment.

Effect of Cognitive Style on Learning and Retrieval of Navigational Environments

“…This interpretation is supported by a previous study showing that FI individuals are more likely to prefer and adopt a survey strategy, while FD ones are very likely to prefer and adopt a landmark strategy (Boccia et al, 2017a). These results allow to hypothesize that the evolved navigational strategy, namely the survey strategy, may be easily accessible to individuals with a FI CS, but not to those with a FD CS.…”

“…Some results support this hypothesis. Indeed, Boccia et al (2017a) found FI individuals were more proficient in performing the “survey” tasks, that is tasks requiring participants to use an abstract, internal, object-based representation of the space, which almost corresponds to a “bird's-eye viewpoint” (i.e., survey representation) (Nori and Giusberti, 2006) and in present study FI were significantly better in both the map drawing tasks. The ability to represent in a map what has been acquired while exploring a novel environment depends on the ability to develop a cognitive map, that is an allocentric, survey representation of the environment (Iaria et al, 2007).…”

“…Field Dependent/Field Independent Cognitive Style (hereafter called CS) has been recently found to affect spatial ability underlining navigational skills and individuals' predispositions toward different navigational styles (Boccia et al, 2016b, 2017a). CS has been proposed as the information processing style that characterizes the way an individual analyzes and organizes the world (Witkin, 1977).…”

“…Recently, CS has been found to predict performances on spatial skills underpinning navigation, such as mental rotation and egocentric perspective taking (Boccia et al, 2016b): FI performed better than FD on both tasks. Furthermore, CS predicted individual's preferred navigational strategy, with FI more prone to prefer survey strategy than FD (Boccia et al, 2017a), regardless the gender.…”

Effect of Cognitive Style on Topographical Learning Across Life Span: Insights From Normal Development

“…In a previous study on young adults, we analyzed the effects of field dependence–independence on different navigational tasks, finding that it did not affect performances on easier tasks such as route learning and landmark recognition but significantly affected those on more difficult tasks, such as those requiring to form a map‐like representation of the environmental space. In the latter, individuals were requested to restructure the egocentric information about the environment they acquired by active exploration in an abstract, allocentric representation (Boccia, Piccardi, et al., ; Boccia, Vecchione, et al., ). Instead, during route learning, individuals were requested to retrieve the path information as they have been processed (i.e., egocentrically).…”