[HN Gopher] Research into why some people have a better sense of...
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Research into why some people have a better sense of direction
Author : Brajeshwar
Score : 49 points
Date : 2024-04-13 12:17 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (knowablemagazine.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (knowablemagazine.org)
| chiph wrote:
| The article focuses on latent ability. And goes somewhat into the
| classification of people who use direction vs. those that use
| landmarks to navigate.
|
| There's a graphic in the article with four maps drawn from memory
| by different people. They say that #1 is perfect and that #4 is
| bad. As a programmer, I see them as connected graphs and that
| both are nearly a match to each other. But #4 has a different
| orientation and doesn't show curves in the road. But IMO it would
| still allow you to get to the locations marked if you turned the
| paper as you moved.
|
| There are also people who have lost their sense of direction due
| to injury. I had a neighbor who could not go to the supermarket
| by themselves because of brain damage (from a car accident). They
| were totally reliant on a family member - or later a GPS unit
| just to travel as little as 3-4 blocks.
| jprete wrote:
| Unfortunately, you've completely missed the point of the four
| drawings - seeing whether the drawer could identify and use
| likely routes that they weren't shown. If map #1 is accurate,
| then I can turn right when I get to the tree and take a
| shortcut to the brick wall, or cut across from the lamps to the
| green box without going through the four-road crossroad. Map #4
| will be misleading at best for understanding the whole area -
| if I try a shortcut from that map, I'll either get to the wrong
| destination or leave the original area and be totally lost.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Everything in map #4 is backwards with respect to left/right
| turns.
| alwaysrunning wrote:
| "the unique experiences each person accumulates as their life
| unfolds. Good navigators, it appears, are mostly made, not born"
|
| As the self proclaimed worst person in the world with directions,
| I can vouch for this. I was never taught how to find north,
| south, east, west as a kid, was never told to pay attention to
| landmarks on your way somewhere, never told to pay attention to
| street names, so on. And as a ultra runner my wife actually
| stopped coming to my races for a while bc you are expected to
| arrive at the next aid station around a certain time and if I
| wasn't familiar with the area I would get lost and she would
| worry that I was killed by a bear or smth. Since the advent of
| GPS on your wrist and such I don't get lost nearly as much. I
| honestly liked getting off course, being somewhere and seeing
| views most of all humanity would never see. But I still fail the
| test of 'point towards the lake' from sitting on my own couch. I
| can't quite make the connection in my mind, like driving I can't
| quite map out the entire route and often get streets confused.
| freitzkriesler2 wrote:
| I was never told any of that either nor was I taught that in
| any capacity in school. However, the key difference ive noticed
| is being in the moment IE paying attention to your immediate
| environment and not getting lost in thought (or phone) that
| differentiates those who have an intuitive sense of direction
| versus those that don't.
|
| With that said, I don't feel comfortable when I don't know
| which way is north so I always try and figure that out first.
| shitter wrote:
| I think this is it for me. Since I was a kid, I've always
| gotten lost in thought when walking around and don't readily
| absorb my surroundings as a result. Even when I actively try
| to do so, it's still hard to navigate because my brain isn't
| well-trained to think that way.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| That's wild to me. I don't know how you wouldn't pay attention
| to those things. No one told me to pay attention to landmarks,
| I don't understand why you _wouldn 't_. Very interesting.
| ninetyninenine wrote:
| They should also correlate navigational ability with IQ.
|
| If such a correlation exists or doesn't exist says a lot about
| navigation.
|
| An informal test:
|
| Are there any really smart people here with credentials and
| credibility to prove it who are also complete garbage at
| navigation?
| kevinventullo wrote:
| I have a PhD in pure math yet rely on GPS for navigating all
| but the most familiar routes.
| latency-guy2 wrote:
| I also maintain a PhD, not in pure math, I know which
| direction I am facing at all times and can navigate without
| explicitly referencing a physical map.
|
| How close are we to developing a representative sample?
| dschroer wrote:
| My partner is a medical doctor. She can't navigate around. I
| don't think there is any link. Navigation was something that I
| was taught early and is a skill like anything else.
| eightys3v3n wrote:
| Awesome and productive suggestion. :D It seems we already have
| one piece of evidence but I would add: Often the people who
| live in the middle of nowhere are not thought of as smart, but
| they can drive or walk 10s or 100s of km through the wilderness
| and get to their destination. While those working high paying
| jobs in a city often use a GPS to drive anywhere off their
| usual route and never use any roads outside the main roads that
| are familiar to their route. I for example, can completely
| avoid rush hour going with the direction of rush hour, by
| taking a different road. This wouldn't work if most people in
| the city were good navigators (assuming they cared of course,
| but I would argue good navigators way-find more creatively even
| when they don't care much).
| julian_t wrote:
| My wife has very poor navigation skills, but is currently
| completing her second masters out of six degrees. So pretty
| smart, I guess.
|
| But she's also really dyslexic, and we've wondered if that
| could have anything to do with it.
| neom wrote:
| FWIW: Never met a dyslexic bad at navigation, your wife is
| the first I've heard of and I ask every other dyslexic I've
| met. I'm extremely dyslexic and extremely good at navigating.
| Look at Google maps once and generally don't need to again, I
| just keep the mental image of the map in my head. Can she
| hold the mental photo of the map? Does she mixes up her left
| and right? Does she also have dyscalculia?
| gherkinnn wrote:
| Anecdotally speaking I see no pattern. I can't see IQ
| predicting whether one gets lost in a telephone box or not.
|
| What I have noticed is that basement and lab dwellers are
| hopeless at navigating.
| bqmjjx0kac wrote:
| > Are there any really smart people here with credentials and
| credibility to prove it who are also complete garbage at
| navigation?
|
| Anecdatum: I think I'm smarter than the average bear. I have an
| MS and work at a FAANG. However, I'm absolute shit at
| navigation. Last month, I hung out with a friend who is
| similarly bad at navigation and we lost the car for 15 minutes.
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| I would say I'm a good navigator. I credit my ability to easily
| navigate around cities to playing 100s of hours of GTA as a kid.
| parpfish wrote:
| when I lived in a city with an underground transit system, it was
| interesting how my mental map developed in a non-contiguous way.
|
| I'd learn lots of little disconnected areas around each transit
| station. But it would take a long time to learn how all those
| little maps would relate to each other.
|
| And each time I started realizing how two of those little
| "islands" were related by streets on the surface, my initial
| reaction was always disbelief. in my mind they were each distinct
| little areas and it didn't seem possible that you could just walk
| from one to the other
| rnewme wrote:
| I had the same experience. Even walking the same street down
| from one side during night and then adjacent during the day,
| not realizing it is the same place for weeks. The one day I had
| most mind melting moment xd
| marcosdumay wrote:
| IMO, living in neighborhoods where the streets are not
| organized in a grid is the most disorienting thing.
|
| You suddenly discover that those two places, that need
| completely different routes to get into are right at the side
| of each other. And you do that again and again, at completely
| random places.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| That's rather a description of a tendency to cut
| neighboring areas, rather than grid system. There's plenty
| of places in the world where places close to itself are
| close to travel between.
| life-and-quiet wrote:
| This is such a great description of learning in general. You
| get pockets of information, and then BAM suddenly you can see
| how they relate.
| senkora wrote:
| This is why I love doing long runs in the city. It helps me
| connect all the little islands in my mind together.
| tetha wrote:
| I was about to say exactly the same thing.
|
| Early one, a city kind of feels like an old school point and
| click adventure. There is train station x, and to the left of
| one exit is this location, to the right of that exit is that
| location.
|
| But eventually there is that realization: Oh wait. 15 minutes
| down this street is that other train station. 8 minutes down
| that street is a bus line which connects to the line going
| home. It's a bit of a rush to make these connections.
|
| And that in turn opens up interesting options. I could just
| walk with people I've been hanging out with at a concert,
| because I'll just know how to get back home. Or from some
| venues, there is good food nearby so you grab that and eat
| while walking somewhat towards home for 20 minutes on a sunny
| evening.
| dasil003 wrote:
| When I moved to London the fact that cycling was my primary
| mode of transportation meant I quickly learned the overall
| distance and distribution of common destinations and landmarks
| in central London to a much greater depth than many
| acquaintances who had lived there for years.
| ghaff wrote:
| As an undergrad that was so me with Boston/Cambridge which, in
| many cases, I saw as T stops that were not really connected at
| street level.
|
| I still remember one time I made 2 line changes in downtown
| Boston, walked about a block, and realized I was back where I
| started :-)
| zabzonk wrote:
| the london tube map is a classic of this - the map is all about
| how to navigate the tube system, not about distances above or
| below ground. i moved to london about 40 years ago, and it took
| me a while to work this out.
| addminztrator wrote:
| People keep telling me to get lost but I never do... I really
| need to learn this skill
| majmanhn wrote:
| TIL about orienteering- seems fun! Also interesting (and maybe
| intuitive) to see reliance on GPS correlates with diminished
| navigational skills.
| Scubabear68 wrote:
| I'm in my 50's, so when I learned to drive there was no GPS or
| phones or anything to help me. I liked to explore and see things,
| so it all had to be done by maps. So I quickly learned to
| oriented myself against NSEW and the roads.
|
| Later in life I likewise got into hiking prior to GPS being
| widely available. That really motivated me to be aware of my
| environment and directions.
|
| I am not perfect at it and can get disoriented if I'm not
| careful, but generally speaking I almost always have a background
| thread in my head keeping track of where I am and my orientation
| when driving.
|
| This came in incredibly handy a few months ago when my phone died
| and I was picking up my son at a friend's house an hour away I
| had only visited once before. It took a bit but I was able to
| find the house again with zero electronic aids.
| ghaff wrote:
| I'm more careful hiking but I don't have maps from this century
| in my car--and don't actually know what _is_ in there other
| than knowing I have a satchel with some maps in it. I should
| probably do an inventory one of these days.
|
| It's really easy to depend on your phone for lots of things and
| then not to have a backup plan if it fails.
| jonah wrote:
| "It's really easy to depend on your phone for lots of things
| and then not to have a backup plan if it fails."
|
| We see this so often in search and rescue. People take off on
| some random hike they found on an app without charging their
| battery and without knowing how long the hike will take
| _them_. So, sooner or later, it gets dark and they start
| using their phone as a flashlight which kills the battery on
| their only navigation device. But, ehh, since they probably
| don 't know how to read a map or orient themselves on it or
| find their way back to the trail which they invariably
| deviated from as some point and went ahead instead of turning
| back. (Also, not a lot of cell coverage in the backcountry
| anyway and probably didn't cache the maps.)
|
| /Rant
| ghaff wrote:
| I'll take shortcuts on very familiar easy local trails. But
| anything else, I'll have map, compass, headlight, water,
| some extra clothing, at least a minimal first aid kit, etc.
|
| re: getting dark. I so often see people heading up a trail
| at 3pm or whatever. Maybe they're just planning to go up a
| ways but I wouldn't count on it. I've observed that even
| fairly experienced people can be pretty bad about
| establishing a sensible timeline.
| tekla wrote:
| People are so used to the luxuries of modern life, that
| even a minor inconvenience becomes life threatening.
|
| People go on hikes with no food, a single bottle of water,
| and its a 13 mile hike up this mountain. Blank looks when I
| ask "do you know where you might get more water????"
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| I wish it talked more about place-naming, routes, roads, and all
| that.
|
| I can't give you directions to a lot of places because I can't
| memorize the arbitrary sequence of route 123, then left on 56A,
| exit 6, then sharp right onto 9. They're just mostly arbitrary,
| indistinguishable roads. The numbers have some meanings [1], but
| it's not enough. Routes and roads should be named according to
| distinguishable landmarks or features, maybe in addition to their
| number. Birch Parkway better be dotted with birch trees.
| Cathedral Street better have a big cathedral that rises up above
| the other buildings. The canyon road flanked with sandstone
| should be called Red Rock Pass. These names are not only prettier
| than random numbers, but they're meaningful and useful.
|
| Of course places and features change over time, but not that
| dramatically, and even if they do, just rename them.
| Constantinople is now Istanbul. We can change the meaningful
| names, but keep the number IDs.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Numbered_Highway...
| jprete wrote:
| US highway numbering was meant for machines, not people - even
| if the machines of the time consisted of people obeying rules
| and following instructions.
| FiatLuxDave wrote:
| One thing I don't see mentioned as a hypothesis for a factor in a
| good sense of direction is inner-ear ability (directional
| proprioception). A few years ago I met Buzz Aldrin at a NASA
| conference, and he told me that he thought that people with a
| poor innate direction sense make good astronauts, because having
| good directional proprioception tends to lead to serious
| spacesickness. The UCL game study would miss this because people
| can't use bodily cues when navigating online. VR sickness is
| quite related to this.
|
| Anecdotally, my mother had a balance disorder, and could get lost
| very quickly in even familiar surroundings, while I get motion
| sick quite easily but have very good direction sense.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| This is really interesting. I have amazing directional
| awareness in real life, but the literal worse in video games.
| quickslowdown wrote:
| Same, my friends get frustrated playing Minecraft or other
| large open world games with me because I'm constantly lost.
| We walk 30 seconds or so away from the base and suddenly I'm
| turned around and have no concept whatsoever of which
| direction I came from or how to get back. Which just doesn't
| happen to me in real life
| hobs wrote:
| It's definitely a skill different to the physical one
| though, and one that needs plenty of practice - mapping
| your virtual world and keeping a running tally of all the
| objects and things you literally cant see except through a
| tiny box is not something that comes naturally to most.
| jemmyw wrote:
| I wonder if this applies to me. I never learnt navigation
| skills but I have a very good sense of direction and I'm also
| very quick to motion sickness in games and on boats.
|
| I actually consider it to be slightly dangerous that I'm over
| confident about where I am and the direction I'm facing. It has
| led to be marching down the wrong track, not realising I'm on a
| parallel path that then sightly deviates.
| tekla wrote:
| Some people refuse to learn. I've always been fascinated that
| people forget that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west
| and if you can see the sun, you can have a general idea of where
| you are going (assuming you know roughly when noon is).
|
| Some are just amazed that I can tell where we are going until I
| remind them I can see their shadows.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Definitely not genetic. Folks in the same close family have
| diametrically opposed abilities in this line.
|
| I blame GPS navigation for a strong dip in talent in this
| generation. They refuse to show you the map beyond a postage-
| stamp area in the immediate vicinity. Making it utterly
| impossible to get your bearings and make good decisions. You
| become totally dependent on the device.
| gedy wrote:
| While true, I do wonder if there's something more innate. My
| mother is totally unable to find her way around, but I've
| always had a keen awareness of directions. E.g. my memories and
| even dreams include position of things N, E, W, & S
| wcedmisten wrote:
| Totally agree on the device dependence. Sometimes I'll navigate
| a route a few times with GPS and then try to find my way there
| without it, just to learn the route.
|
| I was thinking it would be cool to make an app that helps you
| learn navigation. Maybe like a game to find your way to a given
| place, and you get hints if you're off track.
| freitzkriesler2 wrote:
| Before smartphone gps, navigation was something I was really
| proud of having as a skill. I could find my way around town by
| just landmarks and directions from those landmarks.
|
| Nowadays that skill is entirely lost. I recall playing arma 3 and
| needing to use a map and compass. That was a fun exercise .
| post_break wrote:
| I'm very good with knowing where I am and where I'm going. It's
| like a sixth sense compass I have built in. I don't know if it
| was learned or what but at times it feels like a super power.
| Grew up without GPS but did start driving around the time it got
| good.
| parasti wrote:
| I largely credit my spatial awareness to studying maps and also
| learning levels in Nexuiz (the original Nexuiz, a Quake-like
| video game) and how teleport entrances/exits are oriented. That
| felt like learning a skill that at one moment just clicked and I
| haven't lost it since.
| yazzku wrote:
| That and the minimap in Diablo 2. Some people can't tell left
| from right anymore when the car is pointing South.
| netsharc wrote:
| One tip I like is to set your navigation app to "north up". This
| way you're aware which direction (in general) you're heading
| towards. If you know you're going south east and there's a
| detour, you know you need to find a parallel street heading
| south-east-ish.
|
| If translating the arrow pointing left and the next turn is down
| to "turn right ahead" is confusing, on Google Maps at least the
| top of the screen still has arrows pointing left or right how far
| away you are from the turn, so this info is still there.
|
| The tip is from Jeremy Clarkson of Top Gear, who does a lot of
| driving.
| svat wrote:
| Strong agree; came here to recommend this -- this is something
| I came up with by myself and thought I was the only one who did
| this; glad to find others think the same. Doing this has
| greatly improved my sense of direction (to much better than it
| was before I started using GPS/navigation). It's like getting
| instant feedback for your direction sense (e.g. I was driving
| west and just now I turned left, so I'm now driving south), and
| remaining oriented about where different places are wrt each
| other.
|
| A couple of screenshots for anyone confused:
|
| Before:
| https://media.mathstodon.xyz/media_attachments/files/112/264...
|
| After:
| https://media.mathstodon.xyz/media_attachments/files/112/264...
| analog31 wrote:
| I have to have my map on "north up" or I get lost. I'm 60. I
| also grew up in the US Midwest, where there's a NSEW square
| grid of roads over a large portion of the region.
| euroderf wrote:
| A software complaint.
|
| In mapping apps, why can't I get an indicator of where the sun is
| in the sky ? Then if there's no landmarks, or I'm at an awful
| intersection, or whatevs, I can use sun position to get oriented.
| ghaff wrote:
| If you have a working phone, you have a compass though.
|
| There are ephemeris apps for photography but not sure what that
| adds to just getting oriented with a compass, whether on your
| phone or a separate mechanical device.
| bqmjjx0kac wrote:
| In my experience, the compass can be totally backwards when
| you're around tall buildings.
| eszed wrote:
| One game I've played with myself whenever I've moved to a new
| area is to drive or walk until I've felt irremedially lost, and
| then break out the map or GPS to get back home. (I remember once
| or twice trying it with random dice rolls at intersections, but
| this didn't work as well as taking the least-familiar or most
| interesting-looking choice.) It's a great way to discover places
| you'd otherwise never visit, and is a fantastic way to give
| yourself a gestalt sense of the locality.
| spacecadet wrote:
| "Internal GPS" here, but grew up navigating the deep Maine woods.
| Also spent time navigating a single engine over the Alaskan bush
| and various rally/overland races. I really like navigation, dead
| reck, etc. It aint wrong, takes alot of practice and interest in
| navigation to become fluent.
| sramsay wrote:
| Whenever I say, "I probably have the worst sense of direction of
| anyone you will ever meet," people invariably say, "Oh, me too!"
|
| And I say, "Really? So you are never surprised by what you see
| when you walk out of the building you've been working in for 20
| years (you know where the exits are, you just can't figure out
| which exit leads to which side)? When you're sitting in a room in
| your house you can determine -- within, say, ten or fifteen
| minutes -- what room is above/below you? You _routinely_ get lost
| going to places you 've been to hundreds of times in your own
| city? There are perhaps only two or three places you can get to
| in said city without a GPS receiver, but that's about it. You are
| never, _ever_ without a compass? Anywhere? "
|
| Really, folks. I've been like this my whole life (I'm 53), and I
| have no other cognitive deficiencies that I know of. But when
| people talk about "mental maps," I'm not entirely sure what
| they're talking about. When someone says, "Oh, I know a shortcut"
| it's always an absolute revelation. Navigating anywhere is like
| being asked to memorize a 19-digit number.
|
| Whenever I hear about greater or lesser abilities with navigation
| -- and how one might go from lesser to greater -- I always assume
| they are not talking about people like me. I really feel like I'm
| truly impaired when it comes to this, and I'd love to know why!
| bqmjjx0kac wrote:
| I am also like this. I had a fight once with my SO where they
| were upset with me for not trying to level up my navigation
| skills. I have a growth mindset about many other things, but
| I've just absolutely given up on navigation without a
| smartphone.
|
| I also have a hard time recognizing faces of celebrities, but
| not people I know in real life.
|
| From reading about prosopagnosia and other agnosias, I suspect
| there's something funny with my fusiform gyrus.
| erwinmatijsen wrote:
| I've always linked my inability to navigate to my inability
| to visualize things in my head. Even in the area where I've
| been living for about 15 years now, I still struggle to
| determine routes if I don't travel them very regularly.
|
| This afternoon, we drove to a place in the city nearby. By
| now, after so many years, I can guess which exit to take, but
| I don't know whether to turn left or right at the end of the
| exit until I'm at the end and recognise it from previous
| times I've been there. But I can't picture it in my head
| beforehand.
| 7thpower wrote:
| Are you me? If I had been born 15 years earlier, before GPS
| nav, you would not be reading this because I would be dead in
| a ditch somewhere.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| I'm the absolute opposite way. One of the stories my parents
| usually like to tell is when I was like 5 we were in unfamiliar
| city, they got lost and could not find the car for over an hour
| ignoring me, and when they finally listened to me I've managed
| to get them back to the car in 5 minutes. I can easily
| recollect how to get from points A to B in cities I've been
| once 5 years ago.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| I think those of us who came up before GPS and phones had an
| advantage in developing a sense of direction (and I'll add here a
| sense of orientation). I do tend to be aware of the cardinal
| directions and can generally point them out with reasonable
| accuracy when asked. Unfortunately, when I give people directions
| I tend to say "Just to the East of such & such" or "Go south from
| there" and people kind of give me a blank expression (especially
| younger folks who haven't navigated without a phone/GPS) and I
| have to figure out a different way to describe the orientation.
| To me it makes sense, but giving cardinal directions seems to be
| making less sense to people.
|
| I think the other (related) aspect to this is being able to find
| some place again after you've been there once. Usually I don't
| need to consult a map to find a place if I've been there once,
| but I know people who find this difficult and will continue to
| consult online maps even after they've been somewhere before. So
| someone might ask me "how do I get to that place" and I'll reply,
| "we were there just last month - same place" and then I have to
| remember that not everyone is able to find a place they've only
| been to once before.
| vsuperpower2020 wrote:
| It's probably not a blank stare. Most of the time young people
| don't actually want non-GPS directions and are just being
| polite while you finish talking.
| angiosperm wrote:
| There are languages that have no relative directions. You never
| "turn left", you only "turn south" or whatever.
|
| People who grow up with one of those as their first language
| all have absolute direction, even two-year-olds. If their boat
| overturns at sea in a storm, they will never doubt whether
| their boat blew away to the north or south. Everybody has to
| get it right just to be able to speak with comprehensible
| grammar, just the way you need to know what is past or to come.
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