Abstract
Dismounted soldiers today use digital support for navigation and presentation of direction, and most likely such support will become standard equipment. Therefore, it is important to investigate how factors such as display size and performance time influence the ability to transform information on the map to positions in the terrain. An experiment was performed with two display sizes (3.5-inch and 9.7-inch). The participants’ task was to indicate direction to positions in the terrain represented by target symbols on a digital map with four different time limits (5s, 10s, 15s, and 20s). Participants with low spatial ability (measured by PTSOT) had lower precision with the small display, whereas participants with medium and high spatial ability performed equally well with both displays. When the time limit was shortened, task load increased, but performance was not affected. The results also confirm that important aspects of spatial ability can be discriminated by PTSOT.
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