Current Directions in Psych Science August 2018

'''Weisberg, S. M., & Newcombe, N. S. (2018). Cognitive Maps: Some People Make Them, Some People Struggle. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 27, 220-226.'''

The formation of cognitive maps to promote navigation has been a topic of research for decades. However, debate still exists over the specific mechanisms of cognitive map formation as well as findings that often contradict the existence of cognitive maps. Weisberg and Newcombe (2018) briefly review the literature on cognitive maps and suggest an explanation of the discrepancies based on individual differences. Through the use of both real-and-virtual-world environments, findings suggest three groups of individuals with varying levels of performance: (1) integrators, who are efficient at both types of route judgements, (2) non integrators, who excel only at one type of route judgement, and (3) imprecise navigators, who perform poorly on both types of judgements. Following from this, further investigations in the three performance groups revealed correlations to other spatial tasks. For example, integrators perform the best on the mental rotation task, non integrators perform second best, and imprecise navigators perform the worst. Further, integrators appear able to employ multiple strategies for navigation while imprecise navigators are restricted to the use of a single strategy. Ties to increased anxiety among and the personality traits of imprecise navigators are suggested as possible explanations for their overall poor performance.