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Background: Detecting the beginning of cognitive decay is crucial to guarantee good management and the possible prevention of dementia progression. The present study arises from observations collected during an educational event to promote mental and physical health in which incidental neuropsychological data gathered on 290 citizens showed the importance of routine neuropsychological examination in detecting early signs of cognitive decay, since many individuals were unaware of the decrease in their cognitive efficiency. Accordingly, the availability of a screening tool that is computerized, portable, self-administrable, and sensitive to the main neurocognitive changes testifying the progression towards pathological aging is critical. Objective: To this aim, we developed a computerized battery for the early, preclinical Diagnosis of Neurocognitive disease (DiaNe), that can be self-administered and performed autonomously by using a tablet. Methods: DiaNe includes tests expected to evaluate the main cognitive domains involved in neurodegenerative diseases (memory, attention, executive functions) with a detailed assessment of visuospatial memory in particular. Results: DiaNe is not just the translation of standard tests into telematics, rather it is a new tool that provides both accuracy and response time measurements, aimed to screen cognitive profile and monitor it over time, being able to detect changes in still normal performances that may be suggestive of an ongoing onset of neurocognitive disorders. Conclusion: Here we present an investigation of DiaNe concurrent validity showing that its results are comparable to those obtained by existing paper-and-pencil neuropsychological tests, and propose that DiaNe could be a useful, quick, and economical instrument for the monitoring of cognitive aging.

The game of chess is a valuable extracurricular activity for children, with positive effects on their cognitive skills and academic achievements. We investigated the extent to which the Giant Chess Game (GCG) played on a giant chessboard enhances working memory in "navigational-vista" space and "reaching" space. We also assessed if the GCG enhances mental rotation skills. For 10 weeks, 15 children (GCG group) were involved in a giant chess class, while 15 gender and age-matched children were involved in standard didactics (control group-CG). Children were tested twice, before (T0) and after (T1) the GCG, by tasks aimed at measuring: visuo-spatial working memory (VSWM) in the navigational-vista space (Walking Corsi test); VSWM in the reaching space (Corsi Block-Tapping task); mental rotation (Rotating Flowers test). We found that the GCG group significantly improved its performance more than the CG in VSWM in both navigational-vista space and reaching space, as well as in mental rotation. Our results suggest that the GCG has positive effects on visuo-spatial abilities underlying topographical skills. Therefore, the training using GCG can help enhancing spatial ability and may have a role in contrasting the spreading of navigational deficits such as the Developmental Topographical Disorientation (DTD).

Gender differences are often reported in spatial abilities, most of the times favouring men. Even during wayfinding, which requires planning and decision-making, such as choosing roads to take or shortcuts, men are in general better and faster than women. Although different interpretations have been proposed to explain men’s advantage in navigation, no study has explored the possibility that it could be due to men’s better travel planning ability. This latter has been recently identified as a distinct kind of planning that allows implementing an efficient navigational strategy in accordance with the environmental features. Therefore, the present study was aimed at investigating gender differences in travel planning ability. We compared men and women in performing the Key Search Task that requires to implement a strategy to search for a lost object in a wide imagined space. Results showed that men outperform women in both the overall performance and in some specific indexes of the total score. Men had a better travel planning ability with respect to women, outperforming women in configuring the planned strategy and choosing the best point to enter the imagined field. Therefore, men seem to plan the best navigational strategy and appear more cognitively flexible than women in adapting the strategy at the environmental features. The two genders did not differ in the time spent to solve the task. This finding suggests that differences in travel planning skills can contribute in explaining gender differences in wayfinding and spatial orientation.

Divergent thinking is widely recognised as an individual creative potential and an essential factor in fostering creativity since the early stages of life. Albeit previous research revealed that creativity could be pursued through controlled mental processes (e.g. reasoning), the debate about the impact of children's reasoning on divergent thinking and, ultimately, creativity is still open. The present study sought to deepen the relationships between probabilistic reasoning and divergent thinking in a sample of 106 Italian children (mean

The Enhanced Cognitive Interview (ECI) is one of the most useful witness interviews, consisting of 5 techniques (context reinstatement: CR; report everything: RE, mental imagery: MI, change order: CO and change of perspectives: CP) aimed at increasing both the quantity and the quality of elements recalled. All the techniques require mental imagery skills. The present study investigates the relationship between forward and backward visuo-spatial working memory (VSWM) and correct elements recalled through the ECI with respect to its techniques. 99 college students (48 males) watched a color videotape of a fictional crime and performed a visuo-spatial working memory task. The following day they were interviewed about what they had seen. Results showed that high forward VSWM capacity has a role in favoring the total amount of correct information recalled, specifically in the MI technique. This suggests that maintaining and processing mood-related contents in VSWM is easier for individuals with high working memory skills.

Background: Military pilots show advanced visuospatial skills. Previous studies demonstrate that they are better at mentally rotating a target, taking different perspectives, estimating distances and planning travel and have a topographic memory. Here, we compared navigational cognitive styles between military pilots and people without flight experience. Pilots were expected to be more survey-style users than nonpilots, showing more advanced navigational strategies. Method: A total of 106 military jet pilots from the Italian Air Force and 92 nonpilots from the general population matched for education with the pilots were enrolled to investigate group differences in navigational styles. The participants were asked to perform a reduced version of the Spatial Cognitive Style Test (SCST), consisting of six tasks that allow us to distinguish individuals in terms of landmark (people orient themselves by using a figurative memory for environmental objects), route (people use an egocentric representation of the space) and survey (people have a map-like representation of the space) user styles. Results: In line with our hypothesis, military pilots mainly adopt the survey style, whereas nonpilots mainly adopt the route style. In addition, pilots outperformed nonpilots in both the 3D Rotation Task and Map Description Task. Conclusions: Military flight expertise influences some aspects of spatial ability, leading to enhanced human navigation. However, it must be considered that they are a population whose navigational skills were already high at the time of selection at the academy before formal training began.

Individual factors like gender and familiarity can affect the kind of environmental representation that a person acquires during spatial navigation. Men seem to prefer relying on map-like survey representations, while women prefer using sequential route representations. Moreover, a good familiarity with the environment allows more complete environmental representations. This study was aimed at investigating gender differences in two different object-position learning tasks (i.e., Almeria Boxes Tasks) assuming a route or a survey perspective also considering the role of environmental familiarity. Two groups of participants had to learn the position of boxes placed in a virtual room. Participants had several trials, so that familiarity with the environment could increase. In both tasks, the effects of gender and familiarity were found, and only in the route perspective did an interaction effect emerge. This suggests that gender differences can be found regardless of the perspective taken, with men outperforming women in navigational tasks. However, in the route task, gender differences appeared only at the initial phase of learning, when the environment was unexplored, and disappeared when familiarity with the environment increased. This is consistent with studies showing that familiarity can mitigate gender differences in spatial tasks, especially in more complex ones.

In the present study, we employed the dual task technique to explore the role of language in topographical working memory when landmarks are present along the path. We performed three experiments to mainly test the effects of language but also motor, spatial motor and spatial environment interferences on topographical working memory. We aimed to clarify both the role of language in navigational working memory per se and the extent to which spatial language interferes with the main task more than the other types of interference. Specifically, in the three experiments we investigated the differences due to different verbal interference sources (i.e., articulatory suppression of nonsense syllables, right and left, up and bottom, and north, south, east and west). The main hypothesis was that the use of spatial language affected more landmark-based topographical working memory than both the verbalization of nonsense syllables and other types of interference. Results show no effect of spatial language, only spatial environmental interference affected the navigational working memory performance. In general, this might depend on the scarce role of spatial language in online navigational working memory tasks. Specifically, language is more important for learning and retrieval of the cognitive map. Implications and future research directions are discussed.

How people acquire environmental information brings out individual differences that are extremely large and robust. We assume that different spatial strategies used to represent, explore and move through the environment may predict risky driving behaviour. Here, we investigated spatial strategies and driving behaviour in 167 college students (86 women) using the following tests: the Spatial Cognitive Style Test, aimed at assessing spatial strategies characterized by different degrees of spatial competences (ranging from landmark, route to survey); the Manchester Driver Behavior Questionnaire, aimed at assessing errors, lapses, ordinary and aggressive Highway Code violations; the Attitude toward Road Safety Issues, aimed at assessing road safety attitudes related to driving. A series of regression analysis showed that spatial strategy used by drivers predicted the number of errors, lapses, ordinary and aggressive violations, as well as the number of road-safety behaviours. In conclusion, our results suggest that drivers preferring a survey strategy are much more able to make correct spatial decisions. Specifically, they are more confident about their spatial competence that in turn makes them less aggressive towards other drivers. Our findings suggest that good navigators travel without incurring in violations and fines. Implications regarding the possibility to use spatial navigational training to improve driving skills and release driving licence, as well as limitations of the study are discussed.

Memory for object location requires at least three processes: object recognition, object location, and object-location binding. Gender-related differences during childhood are still a matter of debate, especially concerning memory for object location, where females are expected to outperform males. Memory for object position is pivotal for spatial navigation and its investigation during childhood is crucial in order to understand the roots of gender-related differences in spatial orientation. Actually, environmental objects, namely landmarks, can be located using egocentric and/or allocentric frames of references, as well as using the spatial translation between them. Here, we investigated gender-related differences during childhood in object recognition and location whenever a shift between egocentric and allocentric frame of reference is required. Sixty-three boys and 44 girls (aged between four and ten years old) were asked to egocentrically learn a path on the Walking Corsi Test enriched with three landmarks. Then, children were asked to recognize (object recognition) the landmarks encountered along the path and locate them (object location) on an allocentric configuration of the spatial array. Girls outperformed boys in locating landmarks, whereas no difference occurred in landmark recognition. These results provide insights into the gender-related differences in location memory of landmarks, suggesting that females are better than males in the object location component well before the age of 13.

Cognitive style refers to the preference in perceiving, organizing and remembering information. Different cognitive styles have been identified across the years. Amongst others, field-dependence/independence cognitive style is the extent to which the person perceives part of a field as discrete from the surrounding environment as a whole, rather than embedded in the field. Instead, visualizer/verbalizer cognitive style involves the preference in processing visual versus verbal information. Both cognitive styles can influence navigational behaviour. The present study aimed at clarifying the extent to which field-dependence/independence and visualizer/verbalizer cognitive styles affect route-based navigational tasks. Therefore, 44 healthy participants from L'Aquila City were assessed for their cognitive styles and were asked to perform two different navigational tasks: reorder paths using a series of photos depicting landmarks from L'Aquila (visually presented task, visual path task-VisPT); orally describe specific paths of L'Aquila (verbally presented task, verbal path task-VerPT). Results showed that the field-independence cognitive style predicted response times of VisPT, whereas the visualizer/verbalizer cognitive style predicted the instructions given when performing the VerPT, namely, the number of metrical distance indicators provided by participants. By investigating two different cognitive styles, the study clarifies that field-dependence/independence and visualizer/verbalizer cognitive styles can play a different role in spatial navigation and suggests that the material by which a navigational task is presented affects its performance.

Mental imagery plays a crucial role in several cognitive processes, including human navigation. According to the Kosslyn’s Model, mental imagery is subserved by three components: generation, inspection and transformation. The role of transformation, where by individuals recognise, from a different perspective, a place they have already visited, is no longer a matter of debate. However, the role of the other two components when recalling a map from different perspectives, has never been fully investigated. In the present study, we enrolled forty-nine college students and asked them to learn a schematic map and to provide directional judgements aligned or counter-aligned compared to the learnt map orientation. Their mental imagery generation, inspection and transformation skills were also investigated. Results demonstrated that all three visual mental imagery components negatively correlate with errors in providing directional judgements. Specifically, generation assumes a role in aligned directional judgements, while inspection and transformation predict the capability to provide counter-aligned directional judgements. Although all mental imagery components play a role in mentally recalling a map, only the proficiency in inspection and mental rotation can predict the accuracy in changing perspective.

Planning ability is fundamental for goal-directed spatial navigation. Preliminary findings from patients and healthy individuals suggest that travel planning – namely, navigational planning – can be considered a distinct process from visuo-spatial planning ability. In order to shed light on this distinction, two right brain-damaged patients without hemineglect were compared with a control group on two tasks aimed at testing visuo-spatial planning (i.e., Tower of London-16; ToL-16) and travel planning (i.e., Minefield Task; MFT). The former requires planning the moves to reach the right configuration of three coloured beads on three pegs, whereas the latter was opportunely developed to assess travel planning in the navigational environment when obstacles are present. Specifically, the MFT requires participants to plan a route on a large carpet avoiding some hidden obstacles previously observed. Patient 1 showed lesions encompassing the temporo-parietal region and the insula; she performed poorer than the control group on the ToL-16 but showed no deficit on the MFT. Conversely, Patient 2 showed lesions mainly located in the occipito-parietal network of spatial navigation; she performed worse than the control group on the MFT but not on the ToL-16. In both cases performances satisfied the criteria for a classical dissociation, meeting criteria for a double dissociation. These results support the idea that travel planning is a distinct ability and that it is dissociated from visuo-spatial planning skill.

Herein, we investigate how the three types of mental spatial representation (landmark, route and survey) are reorganized to perform wayfinding and homing behaviour. We also investigate the contribution of visuo-spatial working memory in reaching and in vista space in performing the retracing of the path. For this purpose, we asked 68 healthy college students to learn and come back along an unknown path in a real environment and to perform two different forward and backward working memory tasks, one in the reaching space (Corsi Block-Tapping Test) and the other in a vista space (Walking Corsi Test). The results show that participants performed better when travelling the route forward (which corresponds to the originally learned direction) than when travelling the route backward (return path) and that working memory in vista space is crucial for both wayfinding and homing behaviour, while the working memory for reaching space contributes only to homing behaviour. Although homing behaviour is an early mechanism in navigation shared among many species, it represents a very complex behaviour that requires both topographic and visuo-spatial memory as well as the first two levels of environmental knowledge.

People orient themselves in the environment using three different, hierarchically organized, spatial cognitive styles: landmark, route, and survey. Landmark style is based on a representation encompassing only visual information (terrain features); route style is based on a representation that connects landmarks and routes using an egocentric (body-centred) frame of reference; survey style is based on a global map-like representation that mainly involves an allocentric (world-centred) frame of reference. This study was aimed at investigating whether individual spatial cognitive style affected the way to plan a path when searching for a lost object. Participants with landmark, route, and survey style were assessed with an ecological navigational planning task (the Key Search Task), which required planning a strategy to search for the lost key in a hypothetical wide squared field. Results showed that spatial cognitive styles were associated to different navigational planning strategies, although the time to complete the Key Search Task was comparable across the styles. As revealed by the Key Search Task score, survey style individuals were the best navigational planners, route style individuals were less efficient and landmark style individuals were the least efficient. These results suggest that spatial cognitive style has effects on navigational planning. Implications for clinical settings, such as for developmental topographical disorientation, are discussed.

The Key Search Task (KST) is a neuropsychological test that requires strategies for searching a lost key in an imaginary field. This request may involve different cognitive processes as mental imagery and navigation planning. This study was aimed at investigating, by a twenty-channel functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) system, the hemodynamic response (i.e., oxygenated-hemoglobin (O2Hb) and deoxygenated-hemoglobin (HHb) changes) of the prefrontal cortex in navigation planning. A right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (rVLPFC) activation during the KST was hypothesized. Thirty-eight volunteers performed the KST and a Control Task (CT), the latter requiring the volunteers to mark the X letter. An activation (i.e., increase/decrease in O2Hb/HHb) of: 1) rVLPFC during the KST execution, and 2) bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) during the CT execution was found. The present study provides a contribution in localizing the rVLPFC as the critically active region, within the frontal lobes, that was found maximally activated during mental navigation in the mind’s eye of healthy participants while performing the KST. Considering the contribution of rVLPFC in spatial navigation, its activation suggests that the KST could be adopted in the clinical routine for investigating navigation planning. Compared to other neuroimaging techniques, fNIRS (with its relatively low physical constraints) contributes to better clarifying the role of rVLPFC in some aspects of human navigation. Therefore, the combined use of the fNIRS and the KST could be considered as an innovative and valid tool to evaluate fundamental functions for everyday life, such as spatial navigation planning.

Spatial navigation planning ability relies on both mental imagery and cognitive flexibility. Considering the importance of planning ability in everyday life, several neuropsychological tests are used in clinical practice for its assessment, although some of these are not aimed at assessing the strategies of navigational planning. The Porteus Maze Test (PMT) and the Key Search Task (KST) require to plan a strategy in a maze and in an imagined space, respectively. To the best of our knowledge, although these two tests share some features, the relationship between them has never been explored. The purpose of the present study was to investigate, for the first time, the relationship between the PMT and the KST performances in 38 healthy subjects in order to understand the implications of this association for the assessment of spatial navigation ability. Subjects were subdivided in bad or good navigation planners on the basis of the their KST score. The results of the study have revealed a significant difference (t=2.35; p=0.03) in the number of errors made at the PMT by bad navigational planners (0.78±0.28) and good navigational planners (0.10±0.06). The first group (bad navigational planners) made more errors at the PMT than the good navigational planners (who made less errors at the PMT). This provides evidence of the possibility to use the KST and the PMT in a combined way as a new tool for the assessment of spatial navigational planning ability. Furthermore, this finding highlights the importance of mental imagery and cognitive flexibility in spatial navigation, suggesting that these functions could be the link between a good planning ability and a successful spatial navigation. In conclusion, this study suggests that an efficient navigation would not be possible without a good navigational planning ability.