Research reportMental imagery skills and topographical orientation in humans: A correlation study
Introduction
Topographical orientation is generally defined as the individuals’ ability to become familiar and orient in the environment [1]. This complex phenomenon requires the integrity of several cognitive functions such as visual perception, attention, memory, and decision-making skills [2], [3], which all contribute to successful navigation in both familiar and unfamiliar surroundings. Among these cognitive functions, mental imagery skills have been suggested to be critical for orientating within the environment [2], [4], [5], [6].
In human navigation, mental imagery refers to the individuals’ ability to mentally represent the information available within the environment such as landmarks and routes, and use them for the purpose of orientation [2], [4], [5]. For example, in order to reach different locations, individuals are required to create a mental image (or representation) of the environment in which they are moving, and manipulate and rotate it in order to update their current position with respect to the target location they are aiming to reach. Evidence that imagery skills are critical for orientation is provided by several neuropsychological studies showing that brain-damaged patients impaired in topographical orientation usually report difficulties in “revisualisation” and create internal representation of pathways and landmarks encountered while navigating [7], [8]. Similar imagery defects have been reported in a patient with a congenital brain malformation that resulted in a selective impairment in topographical orientation [9]. Finally, patients with selective mental imagery defects such as representational neglect (i.e. the inability to mentally represent the contralesional part of the environment) are generally reported having navigational and orientation impairments as well [10]. Altogether, these findings are consistent with the critical role of mental imagery in human navigation and orientation.
In the last years, several studies in healthy individuals aimed at investigating the relationship between navigational skills and specific mental imagery abilities, such as the ability to mentally rotate objects and geometrical figures. For instance, Moffat et al. [11] used a virtual maze test to investigate gender differences in navigational abilities and the correlations with the individuals’ performances in solving spatial mental rotation tasks including the Vandenberg Mental Rotations Test [12], the Guilford-Zimmerman Spatial Orientation Test [13] and the Money Road Map Test of Direction Sense [14]. In this study, participants were required to navigate within a virtual environment appearing as a monochrome layout interconnecting halls and doorways, and were asked to find the exit of the maze as quick as possible. The authors reported that men were better than women in solving the task, and that their performances were positively correlated with their ability to solve the mental imagery tasks. Similar findings have been recently provided by other studies [15], [16] in which participants were required to solve a virtual version of the Morris Water Maze Test [17], consisting of finding a hidden location within the environment. The results of these studies show that men were better than women in solving the navigational task and that such a better performance was significantly correlated with the individuals’ mental rotation abilities.
Studies performed in ecological surroundings are consistent with the findings reported in virtual environments [18], [19], [20], [21]. For instance, Montello et al. [21] found that men outperform women on tests in which they are required learning from direct experiences in new surroundings, as well as in mental rotation and geographic knowledge tests (i.e. to locate 15 cities on a world map). In a different study, Dabbs et al. [19] reported gender differences related to the strategies that individuals adopt while navigating within the environment: while giving directions, men prefer using metric-distances (miles) and north–south–east–west directions, whereas women show a bias in using landmark available within the environment. Importantly, the authors reported that men perform better than women in both mental rotation and geographic knowledge tests.
Although the findings described above provide useful information regarding the relationship between mental imagery skills and the ability to navigate within the environment, it should be noticed that (1) mental imagery skills include different abilities that can be specifically related to navigational environmental information or not and (2) despite the use of alternative strategies, topographical orientation mainly rely on the formation, first, and use, then, of a mental representation of the environment, namely a cognitive map [22], [23]. Indeed, the use of environmental cognitive maps is critical for orienting since it allows individuals to reach any target location starting from any place and by following any route available within the environment. The contribution of different imagery skills to the formation and use of cognitive maps has never been investigated in previous studies.
Here, we aimed at verifying the hypothesis that the ability to form and use environmental cognitive maps is differently related to the mental imagery skills according with the nature of the information that individuals are required to mentally manipulate. First, we made use of a virtual environment in order to assess the individuals’ ability to both form and use a cognitive map of the environment, namely the Cognitive Map Test (CMT) [24]. Then, we assessed the specific contribution of different mental imagery skills related to the individuals’ ability of forming and using an environmental cognitive map, respectively. Finally, in order to shed more light on the findings previously reported in the literature, individuals’ gender differences were investigated while performing both the Cognitive Map Test and the mental imagery tasks.
Section snippets
Participants
Thirty-two healthy subjects with no history of neurological or psychiatric disorders participated in this study. The sample included 15 women (mean age, S.D. = 23.3 years, 3.24; mean education, S.D. = 14.5 years, 1.96) and 17 men (mean age, S.D. = 23.9 years, 4.11; mean education, S.D. = 14.6 years, 2.32). The study was approved by the local Ethics Committee, and all participants gave written informed consent.
Experimental protocol and procedure
Participants performed two experimental sessions. During the first session, they were required
Results
The multiple matrix correlation's coefficients and their statistical significance values are reported in Table 1. The Learning Task resulted to be significant correlated with the Mental Rotation Test (r = −0.37; p < 0.05) (Fig. 2A) and the Road Map Test (r = −0.56; p < 0.001) (B); whereas, the retrieval task was not correlated with any of the mental imagery test. We also found a statistically significant correlation between the Learning and Retrieval Tasks (r = 0.44; p < 0.05) (C). These results reveal
Discussion
In the present study we investigated the relationship between individuals’ topographical orientation skills and mental imagery abilities. More specifically, we assessed the ability of forming and using a cognitive map, which is critical for orienting [22], and the contribution of different mental imagery skills to these abilities. We found that the ability to form a cognitive map of the environment is significantly correlated with the ability to perform mental rotations of simple geometric
Acknowledgements
This study was supported by the European Community FPS-Streep-Wayfinding (CG). GI is supported by the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research and the Alzheimer Society of Canada.
References (47)
- et al.
Topographical disorientation following unilateral temporal lobe lesions in humans
Neuropsychologia
(1996) - et al.
Representational neglect and navigation in real space
Neuropsychologia
(2005) - et al.
Navigation in a virtual maze: sex differences and correlation with psychometric measures of spatial ability in humans
Evol Human Behav
(1998) A redrawn Vandenberg and Kuse mental rotations test: different versions and factors that affect performance
Brain Cogn
(1995)- et al.
Sex differences and correlations in a virtual Morris water task, a virtual radial arm maze, and mental rotation
Behav Brain Res
(2004) - et al.
Virtual navigation in humans: the impact of age, sex, and hormones on place learning
Horm Behav
(2005) Spatial localization does not require the presence of local cues
Learn Motiv
(1981)- et al.
Spatial ability, navigation strategy, and geographic knowledge among men and women
Evol Human Behav
(1998) - et al.
Individual differences in performance on a large scale, real word wayfinding task
J Environ Psychol
(2001) - et al.
On the different roles of the cerebral hemispheres in mental imagery: the “o’Clock Test” in two clinical cases
Brain Cogn
(1989)
Tracking the mind's image in the brain. I. Time-resolved fMRI during visuospatial mental imagery
Neuron
Tracking the mind's image in the brain. II. Transcranial magnetic stimulation reveals parietal asymmetry in visuospatial imagery
Neuron
Unilateral neglect of representational space
Cortex
The hippocampus as a spatial map. Preliminary evidence from unit activity in the freely-moving rat
Brain Res
The human hippocampus and spatial and episodic memory
Neuron
Head direction cells and the neurophysiological basis for a sense of direction
Prog Neurobiol
Walking in the Corsi test: Which type of memory do you need?
Neurosci Lett
Topographical disorientation: towards an integrated framework for assessment
Neuropsychol Rehabil
Beyond the cognitive map. From place cells to episodic memory
Rehabilitation of topographical disorientation: an experimental single case study
Neuropsychol Rehabil
Topographical disorientation: a synthesis and taxonomy
Brain
Cited by (61)
The role of place attachment and spatial anxiety in environmental knowledge
2024, Journal of Environmental PsychologyCongenital lack and extraordinary ability in object and spatial imagery: An investigation on sub-types of aphantasia and hyperphantasia
2022, Consciousness and CognitionCitation Excerpt :Different levels of ability in scene visual imagery could explain why individuals with object aphantasia and hyperphantasia showed, respectively, a low and strong sense of direction to the same extent as individuals at the extremes of the spatial imagery spectrum. Navigational tasks are associated with both scene visual imagery (Clark et al., 2019) and spatial imagery (Clark et al., 2019; Palermo et al., 2008) that may be respectively affected in object and spatial aphantasia, and, on the contrary, respectively enhanced in object and spatial hyperphantasia. Also, since visual scene imagery requires both object mental imagery to represent the visual features of the navigational objects and spatial mental imagery to set spatial parameters (e.g., location of the landmarks), poor scene visual imagery can result in a poor sense of direction both in object and spatial aphantasia (while the opposite pattern would be observed for both kinds of hyperphantasia).
The effects of video game use on performance in a virtual navigation task
2016, Computers in Human BehaviorCitation Excerpt :However, in our study, the increased use of cognitive map and route strategies in the navigational video game groups may indicate that video game players have the potential to transfer skills to the real world. The formation of a cognitive map, an allocentric representation of the environment that allows an individual to flexibly reach any location from any other within an environment (O'Keefe & Nadel, 1978; Palermo et al., 2008), facilitates the use of short cuts and enables the individual to be more successful in solving navigation tasks. Conversely, after discovering an ideal path, route learning (or executing a set of practiced turns) is a fast and efficient, though inflexible, way to solve a navigation problem (Etchamendy & Bohbot, 2007; Hartley, Maguire, Spiers, & Burgess, 2003).
Giant chess game enhances spatial navigational skills in 6-years-old children: preliminary findings
2024, Applied Neuropsychology: ChildThe Cognitive Skills in Interpretation of Spatial Situations in the League of Legends game
2023, Simulation and Gaming