ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the role of some of the external and internal factors in determining individual differences in the performance of spatial tasks, such as way-finding, map learning, and spatial text processing. An example of how learning perspective, learning test, and individual differences interact in spatial representations comes from an experiment on navigation in a virtual environment. The chapter focuses on how interactions among these variables affect task performance. It describes a number of instruments widely used to assess sense of direction (SOD), spatial strategies, spatial self-efficacy and anxiety, and then analyzes the relationships between these variables. The chapter reviews the main outcomes of several studies based on the use of the instruments described. It also examines the role of the variables considered in conjunction with that of spatial ability and visuospatial working memory (VSWM) in determining spatial knowledge. Another typical way to acquire spatial knowledge is from maps or object configurations.
