The Impact of Stress on Navigation

Many researchers have noted the possible causal relationship between stress and navigation (e.g., Duncko et al., 2007; Gould et al., 2009; Holper et al., 2013; Murty et al., 2011). However, there are several shortcomings of previous research, including the focus on traits such as “spatial anxiety” instead of stress/distress (e.g., Lawton, 1994; Ramirez, Gunderson, Levine, & Beilock, 2012), the evaluation of spatial abilities in small-scale environments (Duncko et al., 2007; Holper et al., 2013; Lawton, 1994; Ramirez et al., 2012), lack of questionnaires used to disentangle positive and negative valence (e.g., Duncko et al., 2007; Holper et al., 2013; Murty et al., 2011), lack of physiological data for validating participants’ self-reports (e.g., Lawton, 1994; Ramirez et al., 2012), and a reliance on correlational data, resulting in an inability to draw causal inferences (e.g., Lawton, 1994; Ramirez et al., 2012). Although most of the relevant literature only suffers from one or two of these shortcomings, to our knowledge, this set of experiments will be the first to eliminate all of these shortcomings.

 

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