#spatialmemory — Public Fediverse posts on home.social

"We now leave #navigation to our #phones. The result: more of us are getting hopelessly lost." #JohnHarris
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/apr/27/smartphone-apps-gps-mountain-rescues-rise
"#GPS has cut us off from a basic human skill. It’s no wonder #mountain #rescuers are being called out so often. [...] Between 2019 and 2024, the total number of #rescues had increased by 24%, and there was a marked jump among the 18 to 24 age group, among whom callouts almost doubled. [...] across #Britain, there is evidently a mounting problem about the gap between people’s urge to experience wild and open spaces, and their ability to cope when they actually get there. [...] research suggesting that “people with greater lifetime GPS experience have worse #spatialmemory during self-guided navigation”. [...] retested 3 years after the initial research, when they found that “greater GPS use since initial testing was associated with a steeper decline in hippocampal-dependent spatial memory”. The #hippocampus is the part of the brain that deals with navigation: among London taxi drivers, the need to memorise so many geographical details was found to cause it to increase in size. But here were findings that suggested the opposite: reliance on automated #directions reducing people’s capacity to navigate for themselves." #cartography
Thx #SophieBerrebi