Rationality doesn’t equal efficiency: Cellphone data shows how we navigate cities

By The Conversation | October 19, 2021

Think of your morn­ing walk to work, school or your favorite cof­fee shop. Are you tak­ing the short­est pos­si­ble route to your des­ti­na­tion? Accord­ing to big data research that my col­leagues and I con­duct­ed, the answer is no: People’s brains are not wired for opti­mal nav­i­ga­tion. Instead of cal­cu­lat­ing the short­est path, peo­ple try to…

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Can you use mental self rotation to read a map?

By Dr. Pascale Michelon | August 15, 2008 |

What is men­tal self rota­tion? It is the abil­i­ty to imag­ine your­self in dif­fer­ent loca­tions in space and imag­ine your body mov­ing in space. This is an abil­i­ty that is used in dif­fer­ent every­day activ­i­ties such as nav­i­gat­ing in an envi­ron­ment or read­ing a map. Abil­i­ty involved: ego­cen­tric spa­tial trans­for­ma­tions (yes, that is the sci­en­tif­ic expression)…

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