Online mobile map effect: how smartphone map use impairs spatial memory

ABSTRACT

This article examined people’s spatial memory and navigation performance when they learned an environmental route using a smartphone map and a paper map. Our results showed that the use of a smartphone map impaired spatial learning and knowledge acquisition. Specifically, participants learned a route less accurately when they used a smartphone map than when using a paper map, revealed by a worse route retracing performance. Although navigation accuracy decreased for the second, unaided walk after the first walk aided with a smartphone map, participants’ self-evaluation in terms of state anxiety and confidence ratings did not show a statistically significant difference. This suggests that smartphone map users did not perceive the memory impairment caused by the smartphone map use.

KEYWORDS:

• Navigation
• route learning
• sense of direction
• spatial anxiety
• Google Effect

Acknowledgments

This research was support by funding from the Japan Digital Road Map Association. We thank Hideyuki Maekawa for his help in data collection.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

¹ We also recorded time length, but unfortunately found its analysis was not as straightforward as we had expected, particularly because of differences among participants in the time need to wait at traffic lights or for vehicles to pass by, which was not controllable.

² To examine a possible difference in retracing performance on the two routes (because participants knew that they would retrace a route without assistance on the second route, but not on the first route), we conducted a paired t test for the navigation accuracy in the unaided condition for the two routes, and found that the difference was nonsignificant, Ms = .93 and 94, respectively, t(19) = 0.43, p = .670. Similarly, an unpaired t test for the number of zooming in and out in the aided condition for the two routes observed a nonsignificant difference, Ms = 0.60 and 1.70, respectively, t(18) = 0.93, p = .362.

³ Overall model fit was statistically tested with respect to a marginal R-squared value (R²_m). Interactions of independent variables were considered only for the regression of navigation accuracy on sense of direction (for which the interactions among sense of direction, map type, and navigation condition were of interest to the examination of our second hypothesis). We ensured in each regression analysis that models with and without interactions led to the same conclusion about the significance of independent variables.

⁴ Data from one participant were missing due to a malfunction of a recorder. The correlation was still significant with a logarithmic transformation of the frequency, r = .81, p < .001. The correlation was also significant when the data point for one participant whose performance-decline value was negative was removed (better performance in the unaided condition), r = .83, p < .001.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Japan Digital Road Map Association [0106].