ArticleOpen mind : discoveries in cognitive science2025
Education Is Positively and Causally Linked With Spatial Navigation Ability Across the Lifespan.
Article in Open mind : discoveries in cognitive science, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
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Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Predicting real-world navigation performance from a virtual navigation task in older adults.PloS one · 2025Article
- Development and validation of the Spatial Navigation and Memory Questionnaire (SPAM).Alzheimer's & dementia (Amsterdam, Netherlands)Article
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Authors and funding
9 authors.
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Abstract
There is consistent evidence for a positive association between education and a wide range of cognitive abilities. In particular, spatial abilities have been shown to be strongly related to academic achievement. However, studying this association is complex as both education and spatial abilities are modulated by multivariate sociodemographic factors, likely to vary across countries. Most previous studies relied on small sample sizes or were restricted to a limited number of countries, thus were unable to control for these covariates. To overcome these limitations, we used a spatial navigation task embedded in a mobile video game. We quantified the wayfinding ability of 397,162 people across 38 countries and showed that on average, education level was positively associated with wayfinding ability. This difference was stronger in older participants and increased with task difficulty. However, the effect of education was different across countries, from near-zero and non-significant in India (Bayes' factor = 0.08, Hedge's
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