Do you have a poor sense of direction and get lost easily?

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KWifler
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24 Mar 2014, 11:48 pm

My brain seems to need to memorize every detail of an area before I can actually say I remember it.
My dad usually drives me everywhere, and I always have the odd feeling that we are going in circles.
I have to walk places over and over before I can recognize them from a car. Walking is the only thing that seems to help.

Also, there's a game that I found a few years ago that gives me a temporary boost in my navigation skill, probably because it requires so much navigation practice.
It's a free 3D MMORPG called Sherwood, and runs in a web browser. The navigation skill area is in a sword fighting dungeon maze through a portal. Whenever you leave, you have to go all the way back through every level to get to the deepest level you've beaten.


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FishStickNick
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25 Mar 2014, 2:49 am

I generally manage well when I'm outdoors. I've been known to get lost indoors, though, if it's a new place.



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25 Mar 2014, 3:53 am

EzraS wrote:
I have a big problem with this. I live in a very low traffic gated community, so its pretty safe for me to walk around my neighborhood, but I'll get lost if I leave my block. And anywhere I'm taken like a store, I'll instantly get lost if I get separated. I always get really confused almost like stuff is spinning around and have a panic attack. I'm always scared I'll get lost and stranded whenever I'm taken anywhere.

yes, I get lost anywhere, even places I've been to lots of times, like my college campus.
I don't know if the problem is exactly bad sense of directions, for instance, when I am asked to perform a visual-spatial puzzle I can do it, so there is something about the situation of going to places. I think it is the fact that my mind gets distracted and I never pay attention to the routes or where I am going. Probably because pacing is a powerful stim.



Al725
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25 Mar 2014, 4:08 am

Let me put it this way. I'm so h :lol: appy for the wonderful invention of gps navigation. Back in my younger years my friends would make fun of me for never knowing how to get somewhere that I'd been to dozens of times. Luckly those NTs will easily have themselves become dependent on the latest technologies so it wouldn't suprise me that members of the younger generations won't be able to find their way without GPS either.



mr_bigmouth_502
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25 Mar 2014, 5:17 am

I find that I have a rather poor sense of direction, and that I'm often heavily reliant on landmarks to know where I am. This is actually one of the main reasons why I haven't started learning how to drive, I'm afraid that I'll try to go somewhere and get completely lost in the middle of nowhere. In northern Alberta, this is kind of a big deal since we have long stretches of wilderness, and urban sprawl is almost unheard of.



EzraS
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25 Mar 2014, 7:47 am

Maybe I've just been too reliant on being lead around everywhere. We are going to try letting me take the lead on outings and see if I can get through it. just know i'm going get really frustrated if i cant pull it off at all.



izzeme
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25 Mar 2014, 8:16 am

my sense of direction is twofold: i cal almost always find my way back, but not towards.

i typically rely on muscle memory, so if i want to go to a place i have been before (the store, school, busstop, whathaveyou), i just go there without thinking, even taking exits i didn't realise i already reached (this also works by bike or by car)
simularly, if i am walking in a city or something, and either i or someone i was with decided to "get back to the car/bus/train" i just go there, rewinding the trip we took, but taking into account places where we doubled-back.

in short, i can always find the shortest way back from B to A, even on a first visit to B, but getting from A to B only works if i have been there before



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25 Mar 2014, 8:30 am

My sense of direction is great. I remember routes very well. Only need to do it once and I remember.

Only thing I suck with is inside stadiums and such.


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25 Mar 2014, 8:36 am

Definitely cannot give but simple direction, I get lost easily. When somewhere I have been to many times, I may still pass where I wanted to go a few times.


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26 Mar 2014, 1:14 am

As long as there are some distinguishable landmarks to base directions off of, I'll do just fine (which is why you'll never find me in a hedge maze!).


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26 Mar 2014, 4:55 am

I would say I don't have a good sense of direction in general but it depends. I like to hill walk and plan the routes out and use a map and compass, that's fine. But pretty much anywhere else I don't have a clue. If I need to drive somewhere new I spend a good hour on google maps figuring out the route, street viewing it etc. I have set routes to drive and walk places. I tend to remember things by where they are, like how many roundabouts, next to a particular building I need to go right. If someone drives me somewhere I will have no clue how we got where we are.



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26 Mar 2014, 6:16 am

My sense of direction is pretty average.


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26 Mar 2014, 5:18 pm

It's weird: sometimes I can just set off through a city I'm visiting for the first time and end up exactly where I wanted to go. Other times, if there are two directions in which I could go, you can pretty much guarantee I'll choose the wrong one, or find myself completely bewildered as to how I ended up at this particular spot on the map.

tetris wrote:
If someone drives me somewhere I will have no clue how we got where we are.


Same here. Or even if we're walking, or taking public transport: if someone else is doing the navigating, I won't have the slightest idea which way we came or how to get there myself next time (unless I make a particular effort to take it in).

As for buildings: railway stations, airports, underground stations... someday someone's going to find me wandering in one of those, befuddled, tired, hungry and having been searching for the right exit for days. I don't know what it is about those places, but I have absolutely zero sense of direction in them. Even in the ones I know, I'll struggle to find the exit I want, or to figure out why I came out where I did.



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26 Mar 2014, 7:40 pm

I have an extremely poor sense of direction. When I was a kid I got lost in my own neighborhood attempting to walk around the block by myself even though I'd been riding around my neighborhood on bicycle with my mother and sister for years. I have an extremely impaired ability to make a mental topographical picture of where I am. If I'm in a shopping center I cannot figure out which way I am supposed to walk when I leave the store. This condition (topographic agnosia/topographical disorientation) is closely related to prosopagnosia, which I also have a mild case of.



SG78
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26 Mar 2014, 7:42 pm

I have a good sense of direction. I get called sometimes by people asking for directions.


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26 Mar 2014, 8:43 pm

mikassyna wrote:
This condition (topographic agnosia/topographical disorientation) is closely related to prosopagnosia, which I also have a mild case of.

That's interesting, does anything else tend to go with the problem forming a mental map and face blindness?