背景:军事飞行员展示了先进的视觉空间技能。先前的研究表明,他们更擅长在精神上旋转目标,采取不同的观点,估计距离和计划旅行,并有地形记忆。这里,我们比较了军事飞行员和没有飞行经验的人的导航认知方式。预计飞行员比非飞行员更多的是调查式用户,展示更先进的导航策略。
方法:共有106名来自意大利空军的军用喷气式飞行员和92名来自普通人群的非飞行员参加了与飞行员相匹配的教育,以调查导航风格的群体差异。参与者被要求进行空间认知风格测试(SCST)的简化版本,由六个任务组成,这些任务使我们能够根据地标区分个人(人们通过对环境对象使用具象记忆来定位自己),route(人们使用以自我为中心的空间表示)和survey(人们具有类似地图的空间表示)用户样式。
结果:符合我们的假设,军事飞行员主要采用调查方式,而非飞行员主要采用航线风格。此外,飞行员在3D旋转任务和地图描述任务中都优于非飞行员。
结论:军事飞行专业知识会影响空间能力的某些方面,增强人类导航能力。然而,必须考虑到他们是在正式培训开始之前在学院选拔时导航技能已经很高的人群。
BACKGROUND: Military pilots show advanced visuospatial skills. Previous studies demonstrate that they are better at mentally rotating a target, taking different perspectives, estimating distances and planning travel and have a topographic memory. Here, we compared navigational cognitive styles between military pilots and people without flight experience. Pilots were expected to be more survey-style users than nonpilots, showing more advanced navigational strategies.
METHODS: A total of 106 military jet pilots from the Italian Air Force and 92 nonpilots from the general population matched for education with the pilots were enrolled to investigate group differences in navigational styles. The participants were asked to perform a reduced version of the Spatial Cognitive Style Test (SCST), consisting of six tasks that allow us to distinguish individuals in terms of landmark (people orient themselves by using a figurative memory for environmental objects), route (people use an egocentric representation of the space) and survey (people have a map-like representation of the space) user styles.
RESULTS: In line with our hypothesis, military pilots mainly adopt the survey style, whereas nonpilots mainly adopt the route style. In addition, pilots outperformed nonpilots in both the 3D Rotation Task and Map Description Task.
CONCLUSIONS: Military flight expertise influences some aspects of spatial ability, leading to enhanced human navigation. However, it must be considered that they are a population whose navigational skills were already high at the time of selection at the academy before formal training began.