Resources about navigational impairments

[terajk]

In honor of the fest celebrating easily lost characters, here are some resources about navigational impairments.
 

Despite the fact that navigational impairments are found in lots of different conditions, they aren’t very well studied. The conflation of visual and spatial skills may have something to do with this, since talking about such broad skillsets together does justice to neither. (The literature about nonverbal learning disability is especially facepalmy about this: it talks about “visual-spatial-organizational” skills. Those are three different categories of skill!) But that is only my hypothesis and I’m not a scientist. I found the most things using the words “topographical disorientation,” “topographical agnosia” (which some people say are two different things) and “wayfinding.”

gettinglost.ca and gettinglost.ca/Home

A website for the research of human navigation in general, and developmental topographical disorientation specifically. The former has articles and videos (not captioned, I don’t think…boo), while the latter has links to newspaper articles, as well as information about how orientation works.

Developmental Topographagnosia

An article by Mo at Neurophilosophy, describing a newly-named condition which is actually called developmental topographic disorientation.

When You Cant’t Find Your Way Home

A layman’s article about developmental topographic disorientation by Brian Alexander.

Dis/Orientation Education

The research project of Jessica Berenblum, who has spatial disorientation as well.

Ideas, love and understanding for the shared management of unspecified learning disabilities impacting spatial relations and selective developmental deficits in navigation, such as Developmental Topographic Disorientation.

Topographic Agnosia…I get lost very easily

Amy Murphy, who has Asperger Syndrome, describes how her navigation skills work.

Directionally Challenged

A thread at the Dyscalculia (math disability) forum where posters talk about difficulties with getting lost.

Poor or No Sense of Direction?

A thread at the Social Anxiety forum; what it says on the tin.

Topographical disorientation: a synthesis and taxonomy by Geoffrey K. Aguirre and Mark D’Esposito in Brain: A Journal of Neurology (Full article, not a PDF)

This article breaks down different types of navigational problems and gives them names. (For instance, some people are unable to recognize landmarks; others are able to recognize landmarks, but are unable to “derive directional information from them”).

 

I'll explain more about how my navigation skills work in the comments; anyone who'd like is welcome to do the same/join in.

Comments

How my navigation skills work, which are only mine

[terajk]

I've never gotten lost in my own house. However, my understanding of spatial language isn't very good and is very literal. (My mother once told me something was "up there" and pointed to a cabinet. I thought she meant the very top of the cabinet. She meant...just the cabinet.) It's also lucky I realized she meant the cabinet at all, since I tend not to be able to judge where people are pointing/gesturing when they say something is "over there.") If I ask my mother where something in the house is (e.g. "Where is the screwdriver?") she gives me incredibly detailed directions.

Although I've never gotten lost in my house, anywhere else is fair game :D. I wasn't able to consistently find anywhere by myself until my 20s--I could sometimes walk to school, which was three blocks away, and other times my mom found me and drove me. Years later, she admitted she was following me in the car. Following other people is a very important life skill for me; following other people is how I got to and from the lunchroom in school, and also out to recess. (I did not like recess, because I couldn't find anybody and kept getting hit with flying projectiles). Other children waited for me outside my classroom, so we could go to lunch or recess together. Someone also took me to the place the special education teacher was, when it was time for me to go there. Some of these children were "afraid [I'd] get hurt."

In middle and high school, where you have different teachers for every class, my mother and I went up to school before the year started and walked through my schedule. I also didn't get demerits for being late. Also, I always sat in the very first desk from the door, and teachers were advised not to rearrange my seat.

I don't drive (some people with navigational impairments do drive), and live at home with my mom. As I said, I've been able to go more places alone since my 20s. When I learned what a strip mall is (i.e. a collection of little stores all in a line) I wanted to live near one, and I did, for a time. In fact, I lived between two strip malls, and was turned right or left outside of our apartment to find them. It was awesome.

With that practice, I was able to learn routes easier than before; so when we moved back to the town I spent the first 18 years of my life in (the same house, even!), I was able to get around the "new" town better than I had before. I can walk to the library, my grade school, Target, several restaurants, and a video game shop. My mother shows me routes with as few turns as possible.

My mother still takes me lots of places, and so does my friend (if we hang out, my mom or they will drive). My town doesn't have a regular bus (boo!), but there is a bus for people who are disabled and elderly which picks you up at your house. I've taken it a couple of times, and it's fun, but it also makes me nervous because you have to call the driver's cell phone while they're on the road. (They pull over, but still--nervous about calling people while they're driving!) Also, the bus tends to take people to "important" things like doctors' appointments, so I'm unsure about asking to be taken to, say, the movies. (The bus people have said no one has asked to go to the movies before, but seem open to it. However, I'm afraid I might have to give someone directions to the theater, or that the theater is too far off the bus route, sincde I'm not sure where it is or where different towns begin and end.)

Since leaving school, I've realized that it's better for me emotionally not to have to navigate a strange environment for 6 hours a day. I do a lot of vounteer work from home.

This is...kind of silly and probably not applicable to other people, but I have trouble following "hard" sci-fi and "high" fantasy (I'm thinking of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, in particular), because there's a lot of focus on characters traveling/how they're going from place to place. (My very favorite character in The Hobbit is Gollum, partly because he didn't leave his cave. Also, I got the idea that it was somehow bad for Bilbo to stay home, and that going out on an adventure was symbolic of his character development/maturity, though I may have got that out of nowhere.) I like horror much better, partly because I just do, but also because it tends to involve people staying in one place (trapped in a farmhouse by zombies! trapped in a supermarket by mist! trapped in a spaceship, even though those are technically science-fiction!). Also, one of the reasons I was/am a Stephen King fan is because his horror novel settings often invoke familiar places, like Wal-Mart. I am also inordinately fond of Cabin Fever, partly because it's about people who should never have left home at all. (Even when there was still a chance they could've been okay, it's the dude who makes fun of people for staying home like [crude word for female anatomy] who goes out and brings back The Incurable Deadly Virus.)

MUSINGS ABOUT LOSTNESS AS A SYMBOL IN CHRISTIANITY, AT LEAST:


But all that is, as I've said, not really directly applicable. However, I am intereted in lostness as a symbol/metaphor for things. (The Christian association of lostness with sin and Hell specifically is equally amusing and bemusing to me--for instance, "perditon" comes from the Latin word "perditus," which means "lost". In modern Italian, you can use a very related word to talk about losing your way or, say, your keys.)


END MUSINGS

My i am ryoga hibiki tag may also be helpful.

*adds post to memories*

[ladyjane]

I think I read something in one of Dr. Oliver Sacks' books about a patient with navigational problems. It's been several years, and I was reading a lot of books on neurological issues at the time, so I can't be certain.

Even if it wasn't him, if you're at all interested in the workings of the brain you should put him on your reading list. I found the case I was looking for in the first book, read the case study, and went back to the beginning and read it cover to over. The next day, I turned in that one in and checked out every one of Sack's book the library had. I read them all in one go.