Orienteering: What relation with visuospatial abilities, wayfinding attitudes, and environment learning?

Orienteering is a sport that involves navigating. As navigation skills relate to individual visuospatial factors, it is worth examining whether practicing orienteering is associated with people's visuospatial abilities and wayfinding attitudes. A sample of 51 participants comprising three groups of 17 individuals with different orienteering expertise (experts, beginners, and controls—people that do not practice sport) completed visuospatial cognitive tasks and wayfinding attitude questionnaires, and were assessed on their everyday spatial habits and map learning. Results of Bayesian analysis showed that experts scored higher than controls in most visuospatial tasks, reported more positive wayfinding attitudes (sense of direction, knowledge of cardinal points, everyday map use), and learned better from maps. Beginners generally performed better than controls and less well than experts did. These results show that orienteering relates with individual visuospatial abilities, attitudes, spatial habits, and spatial learning. They are discussed within the frame of motor activities and spatial cognition.