Spatial anxiety

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Spatial anxiety is a sense of anxiety an individual experiences while processing environmental information contained in one's geographical space (in the sense of Montello's classification of space), [1] with the purpose of navigation and orientation through that space (usually unfamiliar, or very little known). [2] Spatial anxiety is also linked to the feeling of stress regarding the anticipation of a spatial-content related performance task [3] [4] (such as mental rotation, spatial perception, spatial visualisation, object location memory, dynamic spatial ability). [5] Particular cases of spatial anxiety can result in a more severe form of distress, as in agoraphobia. [6]

Contents

Classification

It is still investigated[ when? ] whether spatial anxiety would be considered as one solid, concrete ("unitary") construct (including the experiences of anxiety due to any spatial task), or whether it could be considered to be a "multifactorial construct" (including various subcomponents), attributing the experience of anxiety to several aspects. Evidence has shown that[ weasel words ] spatial anxiety seems to be a "multifactorial construct" that entails two components; that of anxiety regarding navigation and that of anxiety regarding the demand of rotation and visualization skills. [4]

Gender and further individual differences

Gender differences appear to be one of the most prominent differences in spatial anxiety as well as in navigational strategies. Evidence show higher levels of spatial anxiety in women, who tend to choose route strategies, as opposed to men, who tend to choose orientation strategies (a fact which, in turn, has been found to be negatively related to spatial anxiety). [2]

Spatial anxiety levels also seem to vary across different age groups. Evidence has shown spatial anxiety to appear also, early on, during the elementary school years, [3] with anxiety varying in level and tending to be stable; with minimum fluctuations, across life span. [7]

Measuring instruments

There are two primary ways of measuring spatial anxiety. One of them is Lawton's Spatial Anxiety Scale, [2] which was dominant during its era of creation. The other is the Child Spatial Anxiety Questionnaire, which was first one to assess spatial anxiety levels related to other spatial abilities other than navigation and map reading. [3]

Lawton's Spatial Anxiety Scale

The scale measures the degree of anxiety regarding the individual's experience and performance, in tasks assessing one's information processing related to the environment; such as way-finding and navigation. [2]

In total there are eight statements. Some examples are "leaving a store that you have been to for the first time and deciding which way to turn to get to a destination" and "finding your way around in an unfamiliar mall". The rating takes place on a 5-point scale, expressing the degree of anxiety with a continuum from "not at all" to "very much". [2]

Child Spatial Anxiety Questionnaire

The Child Spatial Anxiety Questionnaire was designed for young children and attempts to assess anxiety related to a wider (than usually) range of spatial abilities. Children are asked to report the level of anxiety they feel while in particular spatial abilities-demanding situations. In total it includes eight situations. Some examples are: "how do you feel being asked to say which direction is right or left?", "how do you feel when you are asked to point to a certain place on a map, like this one?", "how do you feel when you have to solve a maze like this in one minute?". [3]

In the original version, the rating takes place on a 3-point scale which includes three different faces; each facial expression, representing a different emotional state (getting from "calm", to "somewhat nervous", to "very nervous"). The revised version assessment takes place on a 5-point scale, with two more facial expressions added. [3]

Cognitive maps in individuals with spatial anxiety

Self-reported spatial anxiety is negatively correlated with performance in spatial tasks, both small-scale – as assessing mental rotation, spatial visualization; and large scale – as environment learning, with participants scoring higher in spatial anxiety scale showing lowered performance. [8] [9] Spatial anxiety is also negatively correlated navigation proficiency ratings on the self-reported sense of direction measures, [10] [11] as well as orientation (map based) and route (egocentric) strategies. Additionally, as anxiety has been shown to influence performance on tasks that utilize working memory resources, working memory is bound to be affected by spatial anxiety, especially visuo-spatial working memory. [12] [13] [14]

There has been evidence demonstrating the negative relationship between spatial anxiety and environmental learning ability. For example, spatial anxiety is found to induce more errors in directional pointing tasks. [9] In an experiment where participants were required to use directional instructions to move a toy car in a virtual three-dimensional environment, those with higher reported spatial anxiety performed with less accuracy. As spatial anxiety increases, pointing accuracy decreases, and navigation errors increase significantly. [15]

Moreover, spatial anxiety has been shown to relate to gender differences in spatial abilities. Generally, women report higher levels of spatial anxiety than men. The use of orientation (based on map view) strategies in indoor or/and outdoor environment can be associated with lower levels of spatial anxiety. [15] Women tend to report using route strategies more than orientation strategies, whereas men report the opposite. [8] Spatial anxiety also contributes to gender differences in environment learning. Recent findings in university students indicate that men rely more than women upon distal gradient cues that provide information on both orientation and direction (i.e., hill lines) whereas women depend upon proximal pinpoint (i.e., landmark) cues more than other cue types when identifying a visual scene. The addition of an exogenous stressor would differentially alter the impact of spatial anxiety on performance in men and women by producing a higher perception of stress in women than males, which results in decreasing performance in females. The findings suggest that gender differences in distal gradient and new cue perception varied based on stress condition. [14]

Some studies have discovered that acute stress can reduce memory for spatial locations, and people reporting difficulties in memorizing landmarks and directions when they are displaced also report higher levels of spatial anxiety. [8] [14] In addition, it has been demonstrated that people with Agoraphobia Disorder have reduced visuo-spatial working memory when they are required to process multiple spatial elements simultaneously. Specifically, in tasks where they were required to navigate using the landmarks independent of themselves (allocentric coordinates), visuo-spatial working memory deficits were shown to hinder their performance. [14]

Possible explanations for the negative correlation between spatial anxiety and the ability to form cognitive map include: individuals lacking sense of their own position with respect to the external environment are more likely to get anxious when faced with unplanned navigation, and the anxiety about becoming lost itself may reduce the ability to attend to cues necessary for way-finding strategizing. [8] [16]

The influence of spatial anxiety can be counteracted by positive beliefs, such as spatial self-efficacy and confidence (i.e. as the belief that one will do well in cognitive tasks). For example, it has been demonstrated that confidence was a predictive factor for accuracy in mental rotation tasks, with participants being more accurate when they were more confident. When this factor was manipulated, the performance was significantly affected. [17] Furthermore, having more self-perception of spatial self-efficacy has a positive role in supporting environment learning beyond the role of gender. [18]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Spatial memory</span> Memory about ones environment and spatial orientation

In cognitive psychology and neuroscience, spatial memory is a form of memory responsible for the recording and recovery of information needed to plan a course to a location and to recall the location of an object or the occurrence of an event. Spatial memory is necessary for orientation in space. Spatial memory can also be divided into egocentric and allocentric spatial memory. A person's spatial memory is required to navigate around a familiar city. A rat's spatial memory is needed to learn the location of food at the end of a maze. In both humans and animals, spatial memories are summarized as a cognitive map.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Baddeley's model of working memory</span> Model of human memory

Baddeley's model of working memory is a model of human memory proposed by Alan Baddeley and Graham Hitch in 1974, in an attempt to present a more accurate model of primary memory. Working memory splits primary memory into multiple components, rather than considering it to be a single, unified construct.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Visual memory</span> Ability to process visual and spatial information

Visual memory describes the relationship between perceptual processing and the encoding, storage and retrieval of the resulting neural representations. Visual memory occurs over a broad time range spanning from eye movements to years in order to visually navigate to a previously visited location. Visual memory is a form of memory which preserves some characteristics of our senses pertaining to visual experience. We are able to place in memory visual information which resembles objects, places, animals or people in a mental image. The experience of visual memory is also referred to as the mind's eye through which we can retrieve from our memory a mental image of original objects, places, animals or people. Visual memory is one of several cognitive systems, which are all interconnected parts that combine to form the human memory. Types of palinopsia, the persistence or recurrence of a visual image after the stimulus has been removed, is a dysfunction of visual memory.

Sex differences in psychology are differences in the mental functions and behaviors of the sexes and are due to a complex interplay of biological, developmental, and cultural factors. Differences have been found in a variety of fields such as mental health, cognitive abilities, personality, emotion, sexuality, and tendency towards aggression. Such variation may be innate, learned, or both. Modern research attempts to distinguish between these causes and to analyze any ethical concerns raised. Since behavior is a result of interactions between nature and nurture, researchers are interested in investigating how biology and environment interact to produce such differences, although this is often not possible.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Barnes maze</span>

The Barnes maze is a tool used in psychological laboratory experiments to measure spatial learning and memory. The test was first developed by Dr. Carol Barnes in 1979. The test subjects are usually rodents such as mice or lab rats, which either serve as a control or may have some genetic variable or deficiency present in them which will cause them to react to the maze differently. The basic function of Barnes maze is to measure the ability of a mouse to learn and remember the location of a target zone using a configuration of distal visual cues located around the testing area. This noninvasive task is useful for evaluating novel chemical entities for their effects on cognition as well as identifying cognitive deficits in transgenic strains of rodents that model for disease such as Alzheimer's disease. It is also used by neuroscientists to determine whether there is a causative effect after mild traumatic brain injury on learning deficits and spatial memory retention (probe) at acute and chronic time points. This task is dependent on the intrinsic inclination of the subjects to escape from an aversive environment and on hippocampal-dependent spatial reference memory.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mental rotation</span>

Mental rotation is the ability to rotate mental representations of two-dimensional and three-dimensional objects as it is related to the visual representation of such rotation within the human mind. There is a relationship between areas of the brain associated with perception and mental rotation. There could also be a relationship between the cognitive rate of spatial processing, general intelligence and mental rotation.

Spatial visualization ability or visual-spatial ability is the ability to mentally manipulate 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional figures. It is typically measured with simple cognitive tests and is predictive of user performance with some kinds of user interfaces.

Mathematical anxiety, also known as math phobia, is a feeling of tension and anxiety that interferes with the manipulation of numbers and the solving of mathematical problems in daily life and academic situations. This is, arguably, distinct from statistics anxiety where the negative state is the result of encountering statistics at any level but related to but distinct from mathematical anxiety.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Attentional control</span> Individuals capacity to choose what they pay attention to and what they ignore

Attentional control, colloquially referred to as concentration, refers to an individual's capacity to choose what they pay attention to and what they ignore. It is also known as endogenous attention or executive attention. In lay terms, attentional control can be described as an individual's ability to concentrate. Primarily mediated by the frontal areas of the brain including the anterior cingulate cortex, attentional control is thought to be closely related to other executive functions such as working memory.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Neuroscience of sex differences</span> Characteristics of the brain that differentiate the male brain and the female brain

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Spatial ability</span> Capacity to understand 3D relationships

Spatial ability or visuo-spatial ability is the capacity to understand, reason, and remember the visual and spatial relations among objects or space.

Mary Hegarty is an Irish–American psychologist who is a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research considers spatial thinking in complex processes. She is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

References

  1. ↑ Montello, Daniel R. (1993), Frank, Andrew U.; Campari, Irene (eds.), "Scale and multiple psychologies of space", Spatial Information Theory A Theoretical Basis for GIS, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Berlin Heidelberg, vol. 716, pp. 312–321, doi:10.1007/3-540-57207-4_21, ISBN   978-3-540-57207-7, S2CID   10877253 , retrieved 2022-05-07
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Lawton, Carol A. (1994). "Gender differences in way-finding strategies: Relationship to spatial ability and spatial anxiety". Sex Roles. 30 (11–12): 765–779. doi:10.1007/BF01544230. ISSN   0360-0025. S2CID   144558948. leaving a store that you have been to for the first time and deciding which way to turn to get to a destination" "finding your way around in an unfamiliar mall
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 Ramirez, Gerardo; Gunderson, Elizabeth A.; Levine, Susan C.; Beilock, Sian L. (2012). "Spatial Anxiety Relates to Spatial Abilities as a Function of Working Memory in Children". Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. 65 (3): 474–487. doi: 10.1080/17470218.2011.616214 . ISSN   1747-0218. PMID   22239255. S2CID   2569378. how do you feel being asked to say which direction is right or left? "how do you feel when you are asked to point to a certain place on a map, like this one?" "how do you feel when you have to solve a maze like this in one minute?
  4. 1 2 Malanchini, Margherita; Rimfeld, Kaili; Shakeshaft, Nicholas G.; Rodic, Maja; Schofield, Kerry; Selzam, Saskia; Dale, Philip S.; Petrill, Stephen A.; Kovas, Yulia (2017). "The genetic and environmental aetiology of spatial, mathematics and general anxiety". Scientific Reports. 7 (1): 42218. Bibcode:2017NatSR...742218M. doi:10.1038/srep42218. ISSN   2045-2322. PMC   5318949 . PMID   28220830.
  5. ↑ Chrisler, Joan C.; McCreary, Donald R., eds. (2010). Handbook of Gender Research in Psychology. New York, NY: Springer New York. doi:10.1007/978-1-4419-1465-1. ISBN   978-1-4419-1464-4.
  6. ↑ Zucchelli, Micaela Maria; Piccardi, Laura; Nori, Raffaella (2021-06-16). "The Fear to Move in a Crowded Environment. Poor Spatial Memory Related to Agoraphobic Disorder". Brain Sciences. 11 (6): 796. doi: 10.3390/brainsci11060796 . ISSN   2076-3425. PMC   8235653 . PMID   34208661.
  7. ↑ Borella, Erika; Meneghetti, Chiara; Ronconi, Lucia; De Beni, Rossana (2014). "Spatial abilities across the adult life span". Developmental Psychology. 50 (2): 384–392. doi:10.1037/a0033818. ISSN   1939-0599. PMID   23895173.
  8. 1 2 3 4 Lawton, Carol A. (1994). "Gender differences in way-finding strategies: Relationship to spatial ability and spatial anxiety". Sex Roles. 30 (11): 765–779. doi:10.1007/BF01544230. ISSN   1573-2762. S2CID   144558948.
  9. 1 2 Lawton, CAROL A. (1996). "Strategies for Indoor Wayfinding: The Role of Orientation". Journal of Environmental Psychology. 16 (2): 137–145. doi:10.1006/jevp.1996.0011. ISSN   0272-4944.
  10. ↑ Meneghetti, Chiara; Borella, Erika; Pastore, Massimiliano; De Beni, Rossana (2014). "The role of spatial abilities and self-assessments in cardinal point orientation across the lifespan". Learning and Individual Differences. 35: 113–121. doi:10.1016/j.lindif.2014.07.006.
  11. ↑ Pazzaglia, Francesca; Meneghetti, Chiara; Ronconi, Lucia (2018). "Tracing a Route and Finding a Shortcut: The Working Memory, Motivational, and Personality Factors Involved". Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. 12: 225. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2018.00225 . PMC   5988874 . PMID   29899694.
  12. ↑ Beilock, Sian L.; Carr, Thomas H. (2005). "When High-Powered People Fail: Working Memory and "Choking Under Pressure" in Math". Psychological Science. 16 (2): 101–105. doi:10.1111/j.0956-7976.2005.00789.x. ISSN   0956-7976. PMID   15686575. S2CID   14898370.
  13. ↑ Kane, Michael J.; Engle, Randall W. (2002). "The role of prefrontal cortex in working-memory capacity, executive attention, and general fluid intelligence: An individual-differences perspective". Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. 9 (4): 637–671. doi: 10.3758/BF03196323 . ISSN   1531-5320. PMID   12613671. S2CID   7992558.
  14. 1 2 3 4 Gabriel, Kara I.; Hong, Stephen M.; Chandra, Marvin; Lonborg, Susan D.; Barkley, Cynthia L. (2011). "Gender Differences in the Effects of Acute Stress on Spatial Ability". Sex Roles. 64 (1–2): 81–89. doi:10.1007/s11199-010-9877-0. ISSN   0360-0025. S2CID   144550458.
  15. 1 2 Hund, Alycia M.; Minarik, Jennifer L. (2006). "Getting From Here to There: Spatial Anxiety, Wayfinding Strategies, Direction Type, and Wayfinding Efficiency". Spatial Cognition & Computation. 6 (3): 179–201. doi:10.1207/s15427633scc0603_1. ISSN   1387-5868. S2CID   6795958.
  16. ↑ Lawton, Carol A.; Kallai, Janos (2002). "Gender Differences in Wayfinding Strategies and Anxiety About Wayfinding: A Cross-Cultural Comparison". Sex Roles. 47 (9): 389–401. doi:10.1023/A:1021668724970. ISSN   1573-2762. S2CID   142592508.
  17. ↑ Estes, Zachary; Felker, Sydney (2012). "Confidence Mediates the Sex Difference in Mental Rotation Performance". Archives of Sexual Behavior. 41 (3): 557–570. doi:10.1007/s10508-011-9875-5. ISSN   1573-2800. PMID   22130691. S2CID   254256776.
  18. ↑ Miola, Laura; Meneghetti, Chiara; Toffalini, Enrico; Pazzaglia, Francesca (2021). "Environmental learning in a virtual environment: Do gender, spatial self-efficacy, and visuospatial abilities matter?". Journal of Environmental Psychology. 78: 101704. doi:10.1016/j.jenvp.2021.101704. ISSN   0272-4944. S2CID   242905440.
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