Individual differences
in Spatial memory
Humans and other animals move through their
environments in order to get to places with food or shelter and other
resources; they also have to avoid threats and dangers such as predators,
assaults and other risk factors. It appears clear that spatial navigation is crucial
in everyday life. This ability is influenced by individual variables (i.e.,
gender, age and familiarity), differences in environmental features (presence
and density of landmarks, regularity of street configuration) and differences
in types of knowledge acquisition (real navigation vs. map learning vs. virtual
reality learning). The Lab analyse these topics to explore individual
differences in moving through the environment.
Web Search
Most people in the Western world now have a
computer with Internet access at home and many of them use the computer and search
engines daily both at home and at work. Within this population, different age
groups and habits can be identified: teenagers and young adults of the 21st
century, who were born and grew up with computers and the Internet, are defined
by Prensky as “Native Digital”; conversely, older people, who began to use
computers for work and other necessities, are called “Digital Immigrant”. Due
to this widespread use of the computer, it seems useful, in the field of
computer science, to understand which factors affect computer users’ behaviour
during computer interaction. Recently, many studies have investigated the role
of individual and cognitive differences during Web navigation and Web
searching. The Literature has tried to identify how internal factors, such as
computer expertise or individual characteristics, and external factors, like
Web browser features, may influence Web searching behaviour. The laboratory has
an interest in developing research in this area.
Sensorimotor representation of self and others
in space in normal and clinical population
The Personal Space (PS) has been defined as the
space surrounding the body, where physical interactions with elements of the
environment or other people take place. “There are too many people in this square, I
do not see any escape routes ... I want to get out of here!!!” exclaims a
person with agoraphobia. Environmental navigation is a complex process that
involves acquiring information and locating oneself with respect to a landmark
or to an absolute coordinate system. Indeed, to orient yourself and reach a
destination, you have to follow some steps: (a) determine self-location and
estimate goal location; (b) select routes from the starting point to a target
destination; (c) monitor the route; and (d) recognize the target. This ability
depends on the integration of numerous cognitive functions. The aim of the Lab
is to analyse how people with clinical disorders acquire and represent spatial
information in relation to him/her-self and others.
The role of external factors in the cognitive
map: The Emotional Environments
The ability to orient in the environment is
crucial for human beings. There is a wide individual
difference in this ability, due to several
internal and/or external factors. Specifically, the role of landmarks can be defined
in terms of valence (positive/pleasant vs. negative/unpleasant) and arousal
(activating/excited vs. deactivating/calm) has only recently been investigated,
demonstrating that positive/negative emotions increasing landmark’s salience
improve performance in navigational memory tasks. The same could be do
considering the whole environment. The aim of the Lab is to analyse the effect
of positive and negative landmarks and/or environments in mental representation
of the environment (cognitive map).
Environmental memory in witness interview
In murder, the victim’s body could be hidden
from investigators and the perpetrator is
willing to co-operate by providing information
about the location of the body. However, the
perpetrator may be unable to accurately
recollect the location of the victim’s body because of
problems with memory. In these cases, it is
often only the suspect that holds the information
that will lead to the successful retrieval of
the victim’s remains and the investigative
interview strategy chosen by the investigator
becomes particularly important (Ryan, Westera,
Kebbell, Milne & Harrison, 2016). In other
cases, people might witness cryminous events while they are doing something
else and then have to remember visual and spatial elements to help
investigators reconstruct the case. The aim of the Lab is to analyse situations
in which memory has the best recall of environmental elements and the people
involved according to the theoretical perspective of embodied cognition.
The Virtual Reality is used across all research
topics.