The streets, roads, landscapes of our childhood mark us more than we think. They even influence our sense of direction in adulthood, says a CNRS study.
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Having grown up in a rural environment can be rather an advantage for the sense of direction. According to a Franco-British study carried out with the CNRS of Lyon among 400 000 people in 38 country, those who spent their childhood in the countryside are better at reading a map, locating themselves in space or memorizing an itinerary. Then, among city dwellers, there is also a difference between natives of cities with winding and irregular streets, such as in Europe or Asia, and those who grew up in American-style cities, with straight streets that intersect at right angle. The latter are less efficient in general orientation. This research has just been published in the journal Nature.
The researchers used an orientation video game. A kind of virtual treasure hunt with maps to read and beacons to find in a course. For Antoine Coutrot, cognitive science researcher at the CNRS in Lyon, the sense of direction is a bit like learning foreign languages, the earlier it is trained, the better it performs in adulthood. However, those who have lived in the countryside are generally brought earlier to travel long distances on a daily basis. This stimulates their ability to locate themselves in space. The same thing when it comes to orienting oneself in an irregular network of streets, it requires more effort from our brain.
Other factors influence the sense of orientation. We lose our orientation skills with age – it is clearly demonstrated, even if we can always train them by having the curiosity to test new routes.
On the other hand, we will immediately cut short the clichés: no, men are not better at orientation than women. In fact, this only happens in countries where gender equality leaves much to be desired. This is what this same team of researchers showed in another study dating from 2018. Obviously, the fewer rights women have, the less autonomy they have to orient themselves, because science shows, for example, that the fact of driving stimulates the ability to find one’s bearings in space. The fact of having studied as well. But with equal rights, the orientation capacities are equivalent. The next challenge for these CNRS researchers will be to study the link between sleep and sense of orientation.