The art gallery maze: a novel tool to assess human navigational abilities

Humans differ widely in their ability to navigate effectively through the environment and in spatial memory skills. Navigation in the environment requires the analysis of many spatial cues, the construction of internal representations, and the use of various strategies. We present a novel tool to assess individual differences in human navigation, consisting of a virtual radial-arm maze presented as an art gallery to explore whether different sets of instructions (intentional or incidental) affect subjects' navigation performance. We furthermore tested the effect of the instructions on exploration strategies during both place learning and recall. We evaluated way-finding ability in 42 subjects, and individual differences in navigation were assessed through the analysis of navigational paths, which permitted the isolation and definition of a few strategies adopted by the incidental and intentional instructions groups. Our results showed that the intentional instruction group performed better than the other group: these subjects correctly paired each central statue and the two paintings in the adjacent arms, and they made less working and reference memory errors. Our analysis of path lengths showed that the intentional instruction group spent more time in the maze (thus being slower), specifically in the central hall, and covered more distance; the time spent in the main hall was, therefore, indicative of the quality of the following performance. Studying how environmental representations and the relative navigational strategies vary among "intentional" and "incidental" groups provides a new window into the acknowledgment of possible strategies to help subjects construct more efficient approaches in human navigation.