Growing up in rural or suburban areas improves spatial navigation
People who grew up in rural or suburban areas have better spatial navigation skills than those raised in cities, particularly cities with grid-pattern streets, finds a new study led by researchers at UCL, University of Lyon ...
The researchers also found that people whose home cities had grid layouts were slightly better at navigating similarly organized street patterns, despite having poorer performance overall, as early childhood environments influence not only navigation ability, but navigation styles as well.
The study, published in Nature, involved nearly 400,000 participants from 38 countries who played the Sea Hero Quest mobile game, a citizen science venture designed for neuroscience research, created by Deutsche Telekom in partnership with Alzheimer's Research UK, UCL, UEA and game developers Glitchers.
Lead researcher Professor Hugo Spiers (UCL Psychology & Language Sciences) said: "We found that growing up outside of cities appears to be good for the development of navigational abilities, and this seems to be influenced by the lack of complexity of many street networks in cities.
"In our recent research, we have found that people's spatial navigation skills decline with age, starting in early adulthood. Here, we found that people who grew up in areas with gridded streets can have comparable navigation skills to people five years their senior from rural areas, and in some areas the difference was even greater."
This image showing 1000 random trajectories in Chicago (griddy city). Credit: Created by Ed Manley
This image (extended data figure 5) showing the street networks of different griddy and entropic cities. Credit: Created by Antoine Coutrot and Ed Manley