Understanding and assisting difficulties with everyday spatial navigation

理解并协助日常空间导航的困难

• 批准号: ES/P011632/1
• 负责人: Alastair Smith
• 金额: $ 45.25万
• 依托单位: Plymouth University
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2018 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES%2FP011632%2F1
• 关键词: Understanding; assisting; difficulties; everyday; spatial

Spatial navigation is a fundamental component of our daily lives, from retracing a familiar journey to work through to exploring a city that we are visiting for the first time. Effective navigation requires a complex synthesis of psychological abilities, including our perception of the environment, directing our attention to useful parts of it, and our ability to remember those features for future journeys. Because of this complexity, it is no surprise that people can experience difficulty with navigation, and this can take a great toll on quality of life, psychological well-being, and employability. Whilst many people experience difficulty at some point in their lives, such as old age or when receiving chemotherapy, other people experience lifelong impairments, and their needs are rarely recognised or met. In this project we will provide a full understanding of individual differences in navigational ability, in both typical adults and a vulnerable population. We will also test new methods to assist people experiencing difficulties with daily wayfinding.We will first recruit a representative sample of adults with Hydrocephalus, a common condition associated with an excess of fluid in the brain. This condition is anecdotally known to have a very large impact on navigational ability which, in turn, adversely affects the daily lives of people and their carers. However, scientists have not produced a full account of this issue, nor have they characterised the underlying cognitive abilities responsible. Participants will complete a battery of experimental tasks designed to assess a broad range of navigational abilities. Importantly, the tests will take place both in the laboratory and the real world. Performance across these tasks will be related to basic cognitive abilities, which will enable us to understand both the variety of strengths and weakness present in this group, along with the basic cognitive skills that underlie them.Difficulties with everyday navigation are not confined to vulnerable groups - there are great individual differences within the typical population. The scientific literature currently lacks a comprehensive and contemporary study of normative individual differences in navigational abilities, which can pave the way to understanding and assisting difficulties across populations. A large representative sample of typical adults (N=200) will complete the same battery of tasks as the individuals with hydrocephalus. This will provide a full characterisation of strengths and weaknesses, alongside a greater understanding of the skills that underlie them. Finally, we will develop and test new cognitive methods to assist people experiencing difficulty. No such methods currently exist, and while much effort is being devoted to the development of navigational aids based on GPS guidance, psychological research has demonstrated that this method can actually impair navigational performance in users. We will invite people from both of the preceding stages who had the most difficulty on our tasks, and they will take part in a study that compares two different methods. These strategies will be compared to a general mindfulness strategy, and we will assess which have the most positive effect on route-learning a week later. We will later follow-up participants' daily navigational experiences, along with their quality of life, to assess the longer-term benefits of intervention. Together, this work will provide an important step-change in our understanding of a fundamental daily behaviour, in both typical adults and a sizeable vulnerable population. It will also spearhead an evidence-based approach to rehabilitation that can improve the daily experiences of individuals experiencing navigational difficulties. This will pave the way to a future programme of interventions that will be applicable to a broad variety of groups whose lives are affected by wayfinding problems.

空间导航是我们日常生活的一个基本组成部分，从返回熟悉的旅程到工作，到探索我们第一次访问的城市。有效的导航需要复杂的综合心理能力，包括我们对环境的感知，将我们的注意力引导到有用的部分，以及我们为未来的旅程记住这些特征的能力。由于这种复杂性，人们在导航方面遇到困难也就不足为奇了，这可能会对生活质量、心理健康和就业能力造成很大影响。虽然许多人在生命的某个阶段遇到困难，例如老年或接受化疗时，但其他人则经历终身损伤，他们的需求很少得到承认或满足。在这个项目中，我们将全面了解典型成年人和弱势群体在导航能力方面的个体差异。我们还将测试新方法，以帮助在日常寻路方面遇到困难的人。我们将首先招募患有脑积水的成年人的代表性样本，脑积水是一种与脑内液体过多相关的常见疾病。据说这种情况对导航能力有很大的影响，反过来，对人们和他们的照顾者的日常生活产生不利影响。然而，科学家们并没有对这个问题做出完整的解释，也没有描述出潜在的认知能力。参与者将完成一系列旨在评估广泛的导航能力的实验任务。重要的是，这些测试将在实验室和现实世界中进行。在这些任务中的表现将与基本的认知能力有关，这将使我们能够了解这个群体中存在的各种优势和劣势，以及构成这些优势和劣势的基本认知技能。日常导航的困难并不局限于弱势群体——在典型人群中存在着巨大的个体差异。科学文献目前缺乏对导航能力规范个体差异的全面和当代研究，这可以为理解和帮助不同人群的困难铺平道路。大量典型成年人的代表性样本（N=200）将完成与脑积水患者相同的任务。这将提供一个完整的优点和缺点的特征，以及对其背后的技能的更好理解。最后，我们将开发和测试新的认知方法来帮助人们经历困难。目前还没有这样的方法，尽管人们正在努力开发基于GPS制导的导航辅助设备，但心理学研究表明，这种方法实际上会损害用户的导航性能。我们将会邀请那些在我们的任务中遇到最大困难的前两个阶段的人，他们将会参与一项比较两种不同方法的研究。这些策略将与一般的正念策略进行比较，一周后我们将评估哪种策略对路线学习有最积极的影响。我们随后将跟踪参与者的日常导航体验，以及他们的生活质量，以评估干预的长期效益。总之，这项工作将为我们对典型成年人和相当大的弱势群体的基本日常行为的理解提供重要的转变。它还将带头采用循证康复方法，改善遇到航行困难的个人的日常体验。这将为未来的干预方案铺平道路，该方案将适用于生活受到寻路问题影响的各种群体。