The ability to mentally represent where things are around us is generally referred to as a cognitive map. Cognitive maps are critical for spatial orientation and navigation given that, when formed, they allow individuals to get anywhere from any place within the environment. However, recent speculations and research on cognitive maps suggest that this important cognitive process is not exclusive to physical spaces and may instead include social spaces as well. Here, we explored various social elements that may be associated with spatial orientation abilities to better understand which aspects of social life may help with organizing a social cognitive map (i.e. a mental representation of social information organized in an orderly and hierarchical manner). To this aim, we assessed social capital, social competence, and quality of social support in a large group of healthy individuals, and analyzed their relationship with performance on spatial orientation tasks evaluating the ability to form and make use of spatial cognitive maps. The findings revealed that individuals who had more social competence, social capital, and social support, perceived themselves to be better at spatially navigating within the environment, as documented in a self-reported measure of spatial navigation in daily life. However, their performance on spatial orientation tasks in a virtual environment revealed that they were instead significantly poor at spatially navigating. We discuss the potential implications of these findings in the context of some important factors that contribute to our social lives, and suggest social elements that future studies could account for to better understand the relationship between spatial and social cognitive maps.

在心理上代表我们周围事物的能力通常被称为认知地图。认知地图对于空间定位和导航至关重要，因为一旦形成，它们允许个人从环境中的任何地方到达任何地方。然而，最近对认知地图的推测和研究表明，这一重要的认知过程不仅限于物理空间，还可能包括社会空间。在这里，我们探索了可能与空间定向能力相关的各种社会元素，以更好地了解社会生活的哪些方面可能有助于组织社会认知地图（即以有序和分层方式组织的社会信息的心理表征）。为此，我们评估了一大群健康个体的社会资本、社会能力和社会支持质量，并分析了它们与空间定位任务表现的关系，评估了形成和利用空间认知图的能力。研究结果表明，具有更多社会能力、社会资本和社会支持的个体, 认为自己更擅长在环境中进行空间导航，正如自我报告的日常生活中空间导航测量所记录的那样。然而，他们在虚拟环境中的空间定位任务的表现表明，他们在空间导航方面明显很差。我们在有助于我们社会生活的一些重要因素的背景下讨论这些发现的潜在影响，并提出未来研究可以解释的社会因素，以更好地理解空间和社会认知图之间的关系。