See how you can improve your sense of direction – 03/16/2024 – Balance

Ralph Street loves maps. He studied geography and urban planning — something quite appropriate for someone with his surname (“Street”, or “Street”, in English).

Long before that, his parents regularly took him to practice orienteering — a sport that involves running between two points using a topographic map and a compass.

“I really don’t remember what it was like before orienteering,” reflects Street, who lives in Oslo, Norway.

Today, he participates in international championships in the sport of orienteering. But this elite knowledge is also useful in his daily life.

Street remembers a group trip from London to Glasgow, Scotland, when he was a child. His friends delegated guidance of the group to him, as soon as they realized his ability to move around the city.

Generally, Street tries to be diplomatic when he has a different opinion than someone else about the right path to take. “Usually, I’m right, but… we can try their way first and [depois] realize they are wrong.”

Other practitioners of the sport of orienteering also report having above-average spatial memory.

But recent research in neuroscience and psychology suggests that ordinary people can also improve their spatial orientation in many ways.

Why do some people navigate better than others?

Street began orienteering at the age of nine.

As your experience indicates, this practice in childhood increases people’s comfort and confidence in their sense of direction. The opportunity to move independently through different environments as a child makes a difference.

“Experiments with animals indicate that passive movement is not so good, because you basically don’t pay attention,” says psychology professor Nora Newcombe, from Temple University, in the United States.

People who grew up in rural environments or in cities with a more complex spatial structure apparently also orient themselves better in adulthood. This performance is proportional to the distances and variety of areas covered.

Even in adulthood, “we have good evidence that people who move greater distances in their surroundings” have better spatial aptitude, according to Newcombe. Simply going straight from home to work and back makes no difference.

In many societies, girls and women have few opportunities to practice their guidance skills. This is believed to be an important reason for the creation of the myth that women would naturally have a worse sense of direction than men.

Women believe that their sense of direction is weaker even in studies in which they perform the same as men.

“People tend to overestimate the effect of gender and also to consider that this effect, in some way, would be independent of cultural factors”, says philosopher and cognitive scientist Pablo Fernandez-Velasco, from the University of York, in the United Kingdom, and from University College London.

The group most likely to overestimate their navigation abilities are older men.

In fact, anthropological research suggests that in societies with greater gender equality, differences in sense of direction between the genders do not exist.

An important 2019 study involved the Mbendjele BaYaka people in the Republic of Congo. This is a group of hunters and gatherers from the tropical forest, who do not use orientation instruments, such as maps and compasses.

Survey participants performed very well on the pointing accuracy tests, with no difference between men and women.

Scientists attributed this conclusion to the similar distances (and spatial experiences) that men and women accumulate in that society.

Researcher Haneul Jang, from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, recalls a yam-searching excursion with a BaYaka woman. The two moved away from the main group and ended up lost in the middle of the forest.

Jang’s GPS couldn’t find her way back, but her companion BaYaka “immediately looked around, watched the sun, and started walking in one direction. Soon after, we found a trail.”

Gender also exerts a cultural influence on whether or not to guide girls to embrace certain professions in which a sense of direction is fundamental.

With cue testing and model building, Newcombe’s research concluded that experienced geologists have a better sense of direction than experienced psychologists.

This relationship to the fields of science, technology, engineering and medicine coincides with Street’s observations in his own community. Many people who practice orienteering end up working in sectors such as engineering, mathematics and physics. He himself works with information technology.

Regarding the effect of education, income and privileges, global research indicates that a country’s GDP per capita is related to its people’s average sense of direction.

How the brain orients itself

How does the brain process location information? One element is cognitive maps, which are essentially mental spatial models.

The cognitive map is believed to reside in the hippocampus, a region of the brain involved in memory processes.

Neuroscientific research has demonstrated that structures around the hippocampus also play key roles in orientation. The entorhinal cortex, for example, has been described as the “compass region of the brain.”

In addition to knowing which direction you are looking and where your destination is, being able to identify permanent landmarks is related to a good sense of direction.

This ability to recognize fixed landmarks has been linked to activity in the retrosplenial cortex, which is part of the brain’s wrinkled outer layer.

The brains of highly specialized browsers seem to be different from others.

One of the best examples is taxi drivers. In London, it takes them years to acquire what is reverentially called “The Knowledge.” And an analysis of these drivers’ brains reveals that they experience hippocampal growth.

There are several orientation and direction tests, but there is no gold standard psychological test on the sense of direction, especially between different cultures.

There are many gaps in research about how certain cultures observe and transmit guidance information, let alone how to evaluate these techniques in a standardized way.

“O [teste] traditional is a kind of virtual labyrinth”, says Fernandez-Velasco. But this labyrinth is not necessarily adapted to the way our sense of direction works in different environments and cultures.

While Western orientation trends tend to privilege visual cues, for example, other cultures pay more attention to cues provided by smell, hearing, and other senses.

“It’s difficult to record all of this with the same test, especially if it is very oriented towards what we consider good guidance in the Western context and perhaps in the urban context,” explains Fernandez-Velasco.

To advance the overall state of knowledge, Fernandez-Velasco asserts that there are important questions to be researched regarding sense of direction, in terms of “how to engage with local collaborators” and “how to consider non-colonial knowledge systems.”

How to improve your sense of direction

There are many misconceptions about the human sense of direction. “A myth is that you think you can’t get better,” according to Nora Newcombe.

Fernandez-Velasco is of the same opinion: although adult brains have less plasticity, they can definitely still learn new techniques.

Newcombe also worries about people who believe a sense of direction is irrelevant in the age of GPS. After all, cell phone batteries can run out and systems can make errors, as evidenced by reports of people who sank in their cars due to GPS guidance.

Orientation tools such as maps, compasses and rock art are types of “cognitive artifacts”. They are useful in many cases, but they can be addictive.

“Sometimes, when you use a cognitive artifact, you offload your cognitive capabilities onto that artifact,” explains Fernandez-Velasco.

He especially refers to GPS. “That, in itself, can have negative effects on your long-term orientation ability.”

People can train themselves to better observe environmental cues, such as wind, sun and relief, whether in a rural or urban environment. “There are indications that many people don’t pay attention to,” according to Newcombe.

It may also be helpful to engage in activities such as sailing and walking. Ralph Street encourages people to find a local orienteering club.

Not everyone will have the resources or opportunity to participate in these types of activities, but we can put some principles into practice while walking or driving.

Firstly, to improve our sense of direction, we need to change our relationship with risk.

“A lot of people aren’t willing to do exploration because they’re afraid,” says Newcombe. “Many adults have a lot of space anxiety. Basically, they don’t want to waste time, but they are also afraid that something bad will happen.”

While cultural variations make it difficult to provide universal cues to improve your sense of direction, in general, “the more you move, especially in slightly challenging ways, the better sense of direction you’ll have,” says Fernandez-Velasco.

“Part of the problem is that people who don’t have a good sense of direction are sometimes insecure and avoid situations involving guidance, which can lead to this negative feedback.”

For people who can’t imagine finding their way around without an app on their cell phone, there are ways to exercise spatial skills using technology.

Street advises not to let Google Maps always decide your route. And Newcombe suggests changing the settings when possible.

The teacher explains that the default of many apps means that “anywhere you go is directly in front of you, which is a terrible way to learn. I’m all for keeping north at the top at all times.”

She also recommends “continuously zooming in and out to be able to observe the detailed information, which is necessary for orientation, but also the main landmarks.”

Getting adequate sleep can also help. A global study found that among participants aged 54 and over, people who slept seven hours in one night performed better in an orienteering game.

A practitioner of orienteering in Norway and a collector in the Republic of Congo can adopt different ways of orienting themselves around their territory. But the good news is that both they and we can continually improve this technique throughout our lives.

Read the original version of this report (in English) on the BBC Future website.