How Do In-Car Navigation Aids Impair Expert Navigators' Spatial Learning Ability?
- PMID: 39193381
- PMCID: PMC11346390
- DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2024.2356858
How Do In-Car Navigation Aids Impair Expert Navigators' Spatial Learning Ability?
Abstract
Reliance on digital navigation aids has already shown negative impacts on navigators' innate spatial abilities. How this happens is still an open research question. We report on an empirical study with twenty-four experienced (male) taxi drivers to evaluate the long-term impacts of in-car navigation system use on the spatial learning ability of these navigation experts. Specifically, we measured cognitive load by means of electroencephalography (EEG) coupled with eye tracking to assess their visuospatial attention allocation during a video-based route-following task while driving through an unknown urban environment. We found that long-term reliance on in-car navigation aids did not affect participants' visual attention allocation during spatial learning but rather limited their ability to encode viewed geographic information into memory, which, in turn, led to greater cognitive load, especially along route segments between intersections. Participants with greater dependence on in-car navigation aids performed worse on the spatial knowledge tests. Our combined behavioral and neuropsychological findings provide evidence for the impairment of expert navigators' spatial learning ability when exposed to long-term use of digital in-car navigation aids.
Keywords: EEG; eye tracking; navigation systems; spatial learning.
© 2024 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
Conflict of interest statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
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