Different factors have been suggested to explain why humans differ in how well and efficiently they acquire and use spatial knowledge about environments. However, the role of emotional variables has been scarcely investigated. Here, we aimed to explore the role of the emotional dimension in terms of the emotional bonds that individuals develop towards places (i.e., the emotional dimension of place attachment that is place identity) and spatial anxiety in explaining individual differences in different kinds of environmental knowledge. A sample of ninety-nine students at the Magna Graecia University of Catanzaro (UMG) were given self-report questionnaires probing place attachment, spatial anxiety, sense of direction, and familiarity with the UMG campus. They were also given three performance tasks probing landmark, route, and survey knowledge of the UMG campus. Correlational analyses showed a significant association between place identity and all the environmental knowledge tasks, while spatial anxiety was significantly associated only with the performance in the survey knowledge task. However, the logistic regression models suggested only a contribution of place identity to landmark knowledge and no effect of spatial anxiety when familiarity and the self-reported sense of direction were considered. We propose that the emotional bond with a place could have a positive effect only in retrieving the visual features of navigational objects (i.e., landmarks), but future studies should expand on the topic with research paradigms involving the actual navigation of a real environment.

中文翻译：

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地方依恋和空间焦虑在环境知识中的作用

人们提出了不同的因素来解释为什么人类在获取和使用有关环境的空间知识的程度和效率方面存在差异。然而，情绪变量的作用却很少被研究。在这里，我们的目的是探讨情感维度在个体对地方发展的情感纽带（即地方依恋的情感维度，即地方认同）和空间焦虑方面的作用，以解释不同类型环境知识中的个体差异。 。卡坦扎罗麦格纳希腊大学 (UMG) 的 99 名学生接受了自我报告问卷调查，调查地点依恋、空间焦虑、方向感以及对 UMG 校园的熟悉程度。他们还接受了三项表演任务，探索 UMG 校园的地标、路线和调查知识。相关分析显示地点认同与所有环境知识任务之间存在显着关联，而空间焦虑仅与调查知识任务中的表现显着相关。然而，逻辑回归模型表明，当考虑熟悉度和自我报告的方向感时，仅地点认同对地标知识有贡献，而没有空间焦虑的影响。我们认为，与某个地方的情感纽带只能在检索导航对象（即地标）的视觉特征时产生积极影响，但未来的研究应该通过涉及真实环境的实际导航的研究范式来扩展该主题。