ArticleFrontiers in psychology2023
Spatial navigation under threat: aversive apprehensions improve route retracing in higher versus lower trait anxious individuals.
Article in Frontiers in psychology, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- Using virtual reality to study spatial mapping and threat learning.NPJ science of learning · 2025Article
- How much time to figure out how to get where? Route planning and subjective stress under time pressure.PloS one · 2025Article
- Graviception Uncertainty, Spatial Anxiety, and Derealization in Patients with Persistent Postural-Perceptual Dizziness.Journal of clinical medicine · 2024Article
- Using Virtual Reality to Study Spatial Mapping and Threat Learning.Research square · 2024Article
- Spatial anxiety contributes to the dizziness-related handicap of adults with peripheral vestibular disease.Frontiers in neurology · 2024Article
- The effect of negative emotion processing on spatial navigation: an experimental study using virtual reality.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
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Abstract
Spatial navigation is a basic function for survival, and the ability to retrace a route has direct relevance for avoiding dangerous places. This study investigates the effects of aversive apprehensions on spatial navigation in a virtual urban environment. Healthy participants with varying degrees of trait anxiety performed a route-repetition and a route-retracing task under threatening and safe context conditions. Results reveal an interaction between the effect of threatening/safe environments and trait anxiety: while threat impairs route-retracing in lower-anxious individuals, this navigational skill is boosted in higher-anxious individuals. According to attentional control theory, this finding can be explained by an attentional shift toward information relevant for intuitive coping strategies (i.e., running away), which should be more pronounced in higher-anxious individuals. On a broader scale, our results demonstrate an often-neglected advantage of trait anxiety, namely that it promotes the processing of environmental information relevant for coping strategies and thus prepares the organism for adequate flight responses.
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