## 4 Discussion
### The Effect of Map Orientation  
This study also explored the effect of map orientation (north-up vs. forward-up) on acquiring spatial knowledge as a function of cognitive style. The use of a north-up map improved performance on the sketch map test regardless of participants' cognitive style, meaning that individuals guided by a north-up map acquired more accurate spatial representation. After the cognitive style was considered, the impact of map orientation  
Figure 11: Mean of route tracing scores for two map orientation conditions by cognitive style. Note: “FD” stands for field dependence and “FI” stands for field independence. favoring the north-up map was noticeable in the overall completeness of the sketch map. In contrast to the study hypothesis, both FD and FI participants showed more accurate canonical organization in their sketch maps after a north-up map guided them. That means navigation aided by a north-up map helped them acquire more accurate canonical spatial information, even for FD individuals who favor directional cues. This differs slightly from [PERSON] et al. [32], who found that FD people perform better on task-up map orientation than on north-up maps, and [PERSON] and [PERSON] [62], who found that egocentric and allocentric processing, which may be associated with FD and FI individuals, may favor forward-up and north-up maps, respectively. Given the learning traits of FD participants, the study assumed that FD individuals would adopt survey knowledge better with a forward-up map, which provides spatial information they could easily process. One possible explanation for these opposite results may be that providing information that could be easily processed may result in disregarding other spatial information. For example, since FD participants have a basic propensity to accept route knowledge more easily that involves sequential information [12; 63], this propensity may have been further strengthened using the information given via the forward-up map. Participants commented in the forward-up map condition, \"I can't remember TV since I just follow the path.\" Moreover, it has been noticed that they were easily confused about left or right turns in the north-up map since the map orientation is not aligned with their body orientation (i.e., the viewing direction). However, they may have been able to naturally acquire the configuration of the entire space through those efforts to align the view direction with the direction of the map, which could also explain the poor performance of FI individuals' angle accuracy in the forward-up map condition. Regarding route knowledge, as the study assumed, FI participants had more correct answers in the landmark sequencing tests after a north-up map guided them compared to their performance in forward-up map conditions. This finding is consistent with the results of [PERSON] et al. [64] showing that participants relied more on map-like allocentric mental representation to order landmarks than egocentric representation, considering that a north-up and a forward-up map may utilize allocentric and egocentric encoding, respectively. On the other hand, FD participants had higher accuracy in landmark sequencing tests in the forward-up map condition than their performance in the north-up map condition, which seems to align with studies such as [PERSON] et al. [65], which concluded that an egocentric encoding system may be most fitting to landmark sequencing tasks. However, map orientation had no statistically significant effect on different cognitive style groups in the route retracing test. In contrast to the study hypothesis, the descriptive results show that FD participants took considerable time in the forward-up condition, which was even longer than their performance in the north-up map condition. The route retracing test requiring both route and survey knowledge could explain these unexpected results.