Tag: spatial ability

‘The Unintended Consequences of Knowing Where We Are’

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

A New Yorker piece by Shayla Love looks at the consequences of our increasing dependence on GPS. It’s nominally about Katherine Dunn’s new book, Little Blue Dot (previously), but it’s one of those pieces that uses the book as a launching pad—talks about what the book talks about, rather than talking about the book in and of itself. Here’s a thought-provoking paragraph from Love’s piece:

Mary Hegarty, a psychologist who leads the Spatial Thinking Lab, at the University of California, Santa Barbara, told me that by relying on G.P.S. we neglect an intrinsic navigation strategy: cognitive mapping, which depends on a spatial conception of the environment that is populated with landmarks such as trees or buildings. This approach is supported by “place cells,” specific neurons in the hippocampus, each of which represents a precise physical location. (One could think of them as the brain’s internal blue dots.) G.P.S. is more in line with a very different navigation strategy, stimulus response, which treats navigation as a series of motor responses: turn left, go five hundred feet, then turn right. This utilizes a different area of the brain, one that supports habitual learning. “I don’t think there’s enough research yet to say G.P.S. is terrible, that it’s hurting your brain,” Hegarty said. But it’s clear that turn-by-turn directions prioritize stimulus response over cognitive mapping.

This is one of those lightbulb moments: I’ve never really relied on GPS receivers for navigation because my navigation strategy is pure cognitive mapping. I don’t follow directions when I travel, at least not unless I’ve worked out the general geography by poring over maps of the area first.

Alzheimer’s and Taxi Drivers: Hold on a Minute

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

In 2024 I blogged about a study that found the lowest incidence of Alzheimer’s-related mortality among ambulance and taxi drivers. At the time I noted that the study had a bunch of caveats and was reluctant to draw conclusions; as I wrote, “this is a long, long way from being able to say, for example, that driving a taxi prevents Alzheimer’s.” Nevertheless, last week The Conversation published a piece by engineering professor Hatim Sharif, who has no qualms drawing those conclusions from that 2024 study. Said piece is making the usual rounds, but grains of salt by the truckload are advised. As one commenter on MetaFilter says, “the causal claim is doing more work than the data can support.”

Previously: London Cabbies’ Unique Brains May Help Alzheimer’s Diagnosis; Jobs Requiring Spatial Memory and Navigation Associated with Low Alzheimer’s Mortality Rates.

Jobs Requiring Spatial Memory and Navigation Associated with Low Alzheimer’s Mortality Rates

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

A population-based study suggesting that people in jobs that require real-time spatial processing—taxi and ambulance drivers—have the lowest rate of Alzheimer’s-related death comes with a bunch of caveats and is reluctant to draw a direct correlation. Per Euronews, people good at spatial processing may be at lower risk regardless of whether they use that skill driving ambulances and taxis. Also:

Independent researchers pointed to a few of those factors, including the fact that the taxi and ambulance drivers in the study died on average around ages 64 to 67, while Alzheimer’s onset is typically after age 65.

Further, few of the drivers were women, who are more likely to develop Alzheimer’s than men, and the analysis didn’t consider genetics or include scans that could show any changes to the brain as a result of their jobs.

So this is a long, long way from being able to say, for example, that driving a taxi prevents Alzheimer’s.

Previously: London Cabbies’ Unique Brains May Help Alzheimer’s Diagnosis.

GPS Negatively Impacts Spatial Memory

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

Rebecca Solnit points to a 2020 study that attempts to measure the impact of using GPS navigation devices on our spatial memory. After assessing 50 drivers, researchers found that drivers with more GPS experience had worse spatial memory when navigating without GPS. But more significantly, it’s a longitudinal study: 13 of the participants (admittedly a small sample) were retested three years later, and greater GPS use correlated with a steeper decline in spatial memory.

This is a single study, and a small sample, so I’m hesitant to draw firm conclusions. And in any case it’s not necessarily a surprising conclusion: the more you rely on a tool, the less able you are to do without it. Well, yes. When we talk about how GPS is destroying our ability to navigate or read a map, there is a presumption that this is an objectively bad thing. Except that I’ve encountered too many people who couldn’t navigate their way out of a bag before GPS. A lot of people who let their GPS receivers get them lost were, I think, pretty good at getting themselves lost without it.

The question isn’t whether GPS use atrophies an individual’s ability to navigate: that’s like worrying that a calculator reduces your ability to do sums in your head, or that a word processor excuses you from knowing how to spell. Of course it does. Those of us who are good at navigation (or sums, or spelling) and think an important skill is being lost will clutch our pearls, but making something easier also makes it more accessible. The question is whether people are, on balance, at a societal level, getting lost less often. That’s not a question neuroscience can solve, nor something you can test with an fMRI. I’m not sure how to measure it, or even if it can be measured. But I’d love to find out.

Previously: Wayfinding: A New Book about the Neuroscience of Navigation; Satnavs and ‘Switching Off’ the Brain; McKinlay: ‘Use or Lose Our Navigation Skills’; ‘Could Society’s Embrace of GPS Be Eroding Our Cognitive Maps?’; How GPS Eats Our Brains.

Gender Differences in Spatial Ability Are a Social Construct

Published on by Jonathan Crowe

A recent psychology paper challenges the notion that men are better than women at directions. When the same test was presented as a measure of spatial ability that women typically did worse at, women did worse than men. But when the same test was presented as a measure of empathy, women did just as well as men. Social conditioning, in other words, may be at play here. Good magazine. [MAPS-L]