Summary for “Individual differences in knowledge network navigation”

With the rapid accumulation of online information, efficient web navigation has grown vital yet challenging. To create an easily navigable cyberspace catering to diverse demographics, understanding how people navigate differently is paramount. While previous research has unveiled individual differences in spatial navigation, such differences in knowledge space navigation remain sparse. To bridge this gap, we conducted an online experiment where participants played a navigation game on Wikipedia and completed personal information questionnaires. In the game, players are given two Wikipedia articles as the source and target, and they need to go from the source to the target through the Wikipedia hyperlinks on the pages.  

Our analysis shows that similar to physical space navigation, age acts as an inhibitor here, likely due to declining cognitive abilities associated with age, impacting fluid intelligence, perceptual speed, memory, and vocabulary. Bilingualism has been demonstrated to have various cognitive benefits including improved executive control and protection against cognitive decline. Our study underscores speaking a foreign language as the most potent predictor of performance in knowledge space navigation, indicating an additional cognitive advantage associated with multilingualism. Under time pressure, participants’ performance improves across trials and males outperform females, an effect not observed in games without time pressure, which aligns with existing research indicating that test timing moderates sex differences in spatial navigation performance. Creativity, as defined conventionally, involves originality and effectiveness. Our discovery extends beyond navigation success (effectiveness), revealing that route uniqueness (originality) is also influenced by individual differences. Notably, Traits included in our experiment that predict successful route-finding to the target usually do not necessarily correspond to innovative route-finding abilities. 

Our study extends previous research on individual differences in spatial navigation to navigation in knowledge space. As Internet penetration reaches close to 100% in developed countries, it is still essential to note that being online means different things for different people based on their characteristics. If something is “up on the Internet”, it does not necessarily mean everyone can find it. In future research an intuitive next step could involve constructing mathematical models that integrate personal traits to elucidate participants’ navigation behavior.