Where we grow up influences our sense of direction

Date:
March 30, 2022
Source:
CNRS
Summary:
New researcher has demonstrated that people's spatial navigation
ability is influenced by their geographical origin. Growing
up in rural or urban areas, or in cities of varying complexity,
influences our sense of direction in adulthood. These results were
obtained using data collected from the video game Sea Hero Quest.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
The streets, alleys, paths and parks of our childhood leave a strong
mark on us, with heretofore unsuspected benefits. A research team led
by scientists from the Laboratoire d'Informatique en Image et Syste`mes d'Information (LIRIS, CNRS/INSA Lyon/Universite' Claude Bernard Lyon 1)
and the Institute of Behavioural Neurosciences at University College
London has found that where people grow up influences their sense
of direction in adulthood. From a diverse set of origins, from rural
to cities of varying complexity, they had uneven skills in terms of
orienting themselves.


========================================================================== First, the scientists have found that, on average, people who grew up
in the countryside have a better sense of direction than people who grew
up in cities.

This extent of this difference varies from country to country: very
strong in Canada, the United States, Argentina and Saudi Arabia, much
less so in Austria, France, India and Vietnam.

The research team then looked at the maps of the major cities in these countries to categorize them according to layout complexity. While
cities like Chicago are arranged in grids, with most branch lines at
a right angle, cities like Paris form a more heterogeneous network,
with nearly every angle present.

Thus, according to their results, growing up in a city with a complex topography confers a better sense of direction.

The research also shows that people generally orient themselves better
when confronted with topographies close to those travelled during
childhood: they are better at navigating great distances if they come
from rural areas, and better on a grid plan if they grew up in a city
"with right angles." These results were achieved with Sea Hero Quest, a
video game developed to study Alzheimer's disease. After having memorized
the game map, players are set objectives at several levels. It can be
difficult to recruit participants to an experiment, and even more so to reproduce an experiment under identical conditions, and video gaming is
a way to address these problems. For this study, from Sea Hero Quest we compared the sense of direction of nearly 400,000 people in 38 countries
around the world.


========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by CNRS. Note: Content may be edited
for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Coutrot, A, Manley, E., Goodroe, S., Gahnstrom, C., Filomena, G.,
Yesiltepe, D., Dalton, R.C., Wiener, J. M., Ho"lscher, C.,
Hornberger, M.

and Spiers, H. J. Entropy of city street networks linked
to future spatial navigation ability. Nature, 2022 DOI:
10.1038/s41586-022-04486-7 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/03/220330111331.htm

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