Does (multi-)touch aid users' spatial memory and navigation in 'panning' and in 'zooming & panning' UIs?

Recent findings from Embodied Cognition reveal strong effects of arm and hand movement on spatial memory. This suggests that input devices may have a far greater influence on users' cognition and users' ability to master a system than we typically believe -- especially for spatial panning or zooming & panning user interfaces. We conducted two experiments to observe whether multi-touch instead of mouse input improves users' spatial memory and navigation performance for such UIs. We observed increased performances for panning UIs but not for zooming & panning UIs. We present our results, provide initial explanations and discuss opportunities and pitfalls for interaction designers.