ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews and identifies gaps in research examining collective navigation and describes the results of a small study aimed at better elucidating the independent and interactive roles of personality and spatial skill in guiding group wayfinding dynamics, wayfinding performance, and spatial memory. In this study, individuals, dyads, and triads completed a series of individual differences tasks and questionnaires, and an individual or shared (dyads and triads) virtual wayfinding experience involving planning and executing routes between origin and destination pairs. Navigators were provided with a single digital map that they could share during the task; patterns of map sharing, virtual navigation, and wayfinding performance were logged. Higher spatial anxiety was associated with more map viewing among group members, higher scores on questionnaires assessing autism-type traits were associated with lower group cohesion, higher group heterogeneity was associated with lower group cohesion and lower path efficiency, and triads tended to have poorer memory for the location of goal locations relative to individuals and dyads. Results speak to the inherent complexity and dynamics of collective navigation, the need for understanding individual differences in guiding group behavior, and the value of continuing research in this domain.
