Map recall accuracy depends on navigational strategies

It is now online the article: “Map recall accuracy depends on navigational strategies” by Alessandro von Gal, Paola Verde, and Laura Piccardi, published in Giornale di Medicina

Militare.

This article, written in Italian and English, intends to analyze the contribution of navigational strategies and gender in the delayed recall of a learned path on a map. For this purpose, we first evaluated the different navigational strategies through a battery of specific tests; 51 participants were instructed to study a schematic map of a route in a city map view for 220 seconds. Then, they were divided into three groups based on their navigational strategies: landmark users, route users, and survey users. After 5 minutes, during which they provided anamnestic information, they were asked to recall the learned path and to draw it on a silent map. Correct positions and false recognitions were evaluated. Results showed that the differences in performance were due to the navigational strategy and not to gender. Individuals using the survey strategy, which is more complex and efficient, are more accurate and have fewer false memories than individuals who use a landmark one, the poorest strategy from a navigational point of view. The absence of differences associated with gender corroborates previous findings that emerge from the Aeronautic literature: men and women with the same abilities perform cognitive tasks with the same efficiency.