## 5 Conclusions  
It has become quite common to use navigation technologies such as GPS during travel. Previous studies have shown that this increasing use of technologies may adversely influence human spatial learning and eventually, spatial navigation. The impairment of spatial navigation may also emerge out of the mismatch between individual preferences such as cognitive style and map orientation facilitated by north-up and forward-up orientations. Taking Google Maps as an example, the default setting is a forward-up map, so people become used to that default map orientation from the beginning. However, the current study found that map orientation may significantly impact some people's spatial navigation performance depending on their cognitive style and the given map orientation. In recent years, the severity and number of extreme weather events such as floods, wildfires, and other emergencies have increased [67]. Under those emergencies when the local landmarks and GPS are no longer available, survey knowledge becomes critical. In fact, people may naturally need to acquire survey knowledge in everyday navigation. The results of this study indicated that cognitive style (i.e., FD and FI) may potentially affect the relationship between map orientation and acquiring spatial knowledge. Even though the FI and FD individuals performed equally as well on sketch map tasks with a north-up map orientation, FI individuals outperformed the FD individuals. The results also confirmed the previous findings on the relationship between spatial learning and other personal variables, such as spatial abilities and spatial strategy. This research added to our understanding of how and to what extent map orientation and individual differences may play an important role in the ability of spatial knowledge acquisition. This study has suggested that a fixed map orientation might benefit survey knowledge acquisition. Specifically, FI individuals seem to perform better on landmark sequencing using a north-up map orientation (allocentric system) than FD people who seem to perform better with a forward-up map orientation (egocentric system). This knowledge is essential to understand the significance of individual preferences such as spatial strategies in spatial navigation performance and to inform emerging navigation technologies to offer customized navigation guidance [12]. The potential applications of the current and related future studies include, for instance, developing a GPS application or tool to improve the end users' navigational performance and spatial knowledge acquisition (both route and survey knowledge) by adopting their cognitive style. Future research should focus on expanding the study to include a larger pool of participants beyond university students and address the other limitations of this study such as the number of trials, potential external factors associated with screen resolution and size, and Internet connectivity-related disruptions. The following supporting information can be downloaded at [[https://www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/app14104012/s1](https://www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/app14104012/s1)]([https://www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/app14104012/s1](https://www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/app14104012/s1)): Table S1: Independent samples _t_-test and Mann-Whitney U test results of spatial ability tests with respect to cognitive style ; Table S2: Results of ANOVA analysis of the effect of map orientation on the pointing direction test; Table S3: Repeated measures ANOVA results for the effect of map orientation on canonical accuracy; Table S4: Repeated measures ANOVA results for the effect of map orientation on angle accuracy; Table S5: Repeated measure ANOVA results for the main effect of map orientation on landmark sequencing score with cognitive style as a fixed factor; Table S6: Post hoc comparisons; and Table S7: Repeated measure ANOVA results for the main effect of map orientation on total egress time in route retracing task with cognitive style as a fixed factor. Conceptualization, H.P. ; methodology, H.P.