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.