Name: Maugan Lloyd

School of Psychological and Brain Sciences

Ph.D. Dissertation Defense Meeting

Time: Monday November 9th, 2026 9am Eastern Time

Location: Room 150 or https://gatech.zoom.us/j/94024313801

Dissertation Committee Chair/Advisor:

Dr. Scott Moffat (Georgia Tech)

Dissertation Committee Members:

Dr. Robert Ariel – (Virginia Wesleyan University, Department of Psychology)

Dr. Thackery Brown – (Georgia Tech)

Dr. Paul Verhaeghen – (Georgia Tech)

Dr. Steven Weisberg – (University of Texas at Arlington, Department of Psychology)

Title: Individual Differences in Navigation Performance and Metacognitive Monitoring:

The Role of Confidence in Route Learning

Abstract:

Learning an environment requires both knowledge of spatial relationships and an ability to judge when that knowledge is reliable. Confidence may also influence the strategies navigators use both when learning an environment and retrieving spatial information. Seventy-one mainly younger adults learned landmarks on two routes in immersive virtual reality. They then made 56 directional pointing judgments, each accompanied by a chosen continuous angular area intended to contain the correct direction with 90% confidence. Based on pointing performance, participants were classified as integrators (accurate within and between routes), non-integrators (accurate within routes but inaccurate between routes), or imprecise navigators (inaccurate on both). They also completed baseline measures and a three-arm Y-maze to assess allocentric versus egocentric strategy preference. Pointing errors and confidence intervals were wider for between-route judgments. Absolute calibration gaps were larger between routes, with non-integrators resembling integrators within routes but imprecise navigators between routes. Relative monitoring was also substantially weaker between routes: a 10° increase in confidence half-width was associated with a 12.9% increase in pointing error within routes, compared with only 1.4% between routes. Integrators reported a better general sense of direction than imprecise navigators. Interestingly, non-integrators performed relatively well on mental rotation and reported comparatively strong spatial ability, yet rated their general sense of direction more poorly than integrators. These findings suggest that confidence reflected the greater demands of between-route judgments but provided less information about the accuracy of individual responses. Non-integrators' relatively strong spatial abilities and within-route performance suggest that their difficulties with route integration may reflect how spatial knowledge is constructed or applied, rather than a general limitation in spatial ability. Testing whether confidence influences strategy selection, rather than simply reflecting performance, could help explain why some navigators with otherwise adequate spatial abilities seem to struggle to integrate routes into a survey representation of the environment.