McMaster University Department of Psychology, Neuroscience and Behavior Debriefing Information Page
Impact of GPS dependency on wayfinding abilities in young adults
Principal Investigator: Dr. Judith Shedden (shedden@mcmaster.ca) P.I. Contact Number: 905-525- 9140 ext. 24345
Student Investigator: Yasaman Jabbari (jabbariy@mcmaster.ca) Researcher Contact Number: 905-525- 9140 ext. 24344
The goal of the study you participated in today is to investigate the impact of GPS use on spatial memory of young adults by running a series of online questionnaires and a navigation task. It is informative to know how GPS dependency and individual differences in working memory, anxiety and depression interact with our navigation abilities. Spatial memory relies heavily on the hippocampus for memory retrieval and integration. Hippocampal dysfunction is associated with high levels anxiety and depression, as well as deficits in working memory. Moreover, several studies have found relationships between long-term GPS use and poor performance in route learning tasks. Accordingly, this study aims to explore potential interactions between anxiety and depression levels, performance on navigation tasks and GPS dependency.
Independent variables: Online questionnaires (e.g. GPS dependency, driving experience, mood characteristics, and memory). Navigation task test trials: same or different viewpoint as learning trials.
Dependent variables: Scores on online questionnaires. Accuracy scores in navigation experiment. Correlations between questionnaire scores and navigation scores.
Suggested articles to read:
- Dahmani, L., Bohbot, V.D. (2020). Habitual use of GPS negatively impacts spatial memory during self-guided navigation. Scientific Reports, 10, 6310
- Ruginski, I. T., Creem-Regehr, S. H., Stefanucci, J. K., & Cashdan, E. (2019). GPS use negatively affects environmental learning through spatial transformation abilities. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 64, 12–20
