EXPLORING THE IMPACT OF STRESS ON SPATIAL NAVIGATION

Abstract

Stress profoundly influences cognitive functions and decision-making processes, impacting everyday tasks like navigation. Previous studies have found that when stressed, people are inclined to travel familiar routes, but they have not tested how varying the familiarity of a route may impact their navigation choices. This study explores the relationship between stress and navigation strategies, focusing on the effects of induced stress on individuals' ability to navigate a virtual environment. Twelve healthy adults participated in a series of navigation tasks under three conditions: no stress (control), physical stress (cold pressor task), and mental stress (fire environment). Cortisol levels were measured to determine the effectiveness of two different stress manipulations. Participants learned and recreated paths in the virtual city and then completed a navigation task that asked them to travel to specific locations in the virtual city. The participants' navigation strategies revealed differential effects of stress on path familiarity and navigation behavior. In the path recreation trials, participants were more likely to recreate the path they were more familiar with first. Statistical analyses suggest that stress induction did not produce a significant change in cortisol levels. However, with a small sample size with large variability, a definitive conclusion about the effects of stress on cortisol cannot be made. Path familiarity influenced participants' ability to recreate one of the two learned paths, with trends observed based on which path was more familiar. These findings underscore the complex interplay between stress, cognition, and navigation. While the data is limited with the size of our current sample, it suggests that stress may influence how individuals navigate in real-world scenarios. Further analysis in this study and future studies with larger and more diverse samples will help to solidify these observations.