Spatial ability and land navigation under degraded visual conditions

Land navigation tasks require the use of visual cues. When these cues are degraded by the loss of resolution, navigators suffer varying degrees of performance decrements. We tested the hypothesis that these decrements are less severe for people of high spatial ability than they are for people of low spatial ability. We tested 108 noncommissioned officers on a task that required them to determine if two woodland photographs taken from different directions (N, NE, E ... NW) were of the same location; spatial ability was assessed using the Cognitive Laterality Battery. Spatial ability was related to the ability to do this task. Furthermore, there was a significant interaction between spatial ability and visual resolution on recognition performance. This article discusses the implications of these results for teleoperations and land navigation.