Improving navigational skills throughout the lifespan: a systematic review on training in healthy population

Spatial navigation is a complex ability that plays a crucial role in daily life throughout the lifespan, allowing individuals to successfully orient themselves in the environment. In recent years, there has been a growing interest in implementing training programmes to promote spatial navigation ability, but an overview was missing. The present systematic review aimed to analyse the current evidence on spatial navigation training in healthy individuals of all ages, considering several aspects such as age of participants, training characteristics and outcome measures characteristics as well as transfer effects and other relevant factors. Based on the PRISMA guidelines, we searched the PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science Core Collection databases. Out of 2670 articles, 24 studies met the inclusion criteria and were eligible for this review. The 24 studies included showed interest in implementing training to promote navigational ability in individuals of all ages. Moreover, training led to an improvement in navigational ability from childhood to senescence, with children appearing to be particularly responsive to training programmes, followed by adults and then older adults. Current literature has also highlighted an extreme heterogeneity in the methodology used to train navigational ability and to evaluate the efficacy of the training. Finally, the positive effects of the training appeared to be independent from types of environments (real and virtual) and space size (large and small) used to implement the training. In conclusion, the present systematic review could provide a useful overview of the navigational training already carried out, thus facilitating future implementations and applications. • Trainings improve navigational skills through a lifetime, from childhood to old age • Children are particularly responsive to training, followed by adults and older adults • Heterogeneity emerges in how trainings are implemented and their efficacy evaluated • Spatial navigation trainings work efficiently in both real and virtual environments • Training assessment can benefit from combining ad hoc and standardized measures