Poll: When walking do you focus on the ground or far ahead?

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After moving from the country to a place with sidewalks, it was some years before I began to stumble when taking a shortcut across an empty lot. My normal gait had become more like a shuffle, because the pavement was usually reliably flat. The local kids can run across broken ice while keeping an eye on their friends.

Focusing on the ground in front of me is one of the reasons why I get lost easily.

When I was a young boy I would always look down. Sometimes I would go to store without a penny in my pocket. Generally by the time I reached the store around a mile away, I had enough money to buy a candy bar. It is interesting all the things you can find discarded along the road. Also back in those days they had refunds on bottles. So it was also a treasure that could be converted into cash.

Now that I am much older I generally do both.

So how should I answer this question? I do think that I look far ahead, but only because I was taught to do it by my parents at age 10 or so because they thought it looked like I wasn't paying attention if I looked at the ground.

Recently I've noticed that, when stressed, I revert to looking more at the ground.

So do you want me to answer with what I have learned to do most of the time, or what is apparently more natural to me?

Vision involves far more memory than we often realize. When a local landmark burned down, it took a while for everyone to actually notice it was gone with deliberate looks. If you see a step five paces ahead, you can easily stay ready for it while looking up. Driving safely depends upon scanning around to update a mental image of one's surroundings.

I learned to look at the ground while walking because I kept bumping into little kids and things. Then it became a habit.

I used to look at the ground while walking because of light sensitivity. Since I discovered a thing called sensory processing disorder, I started wearing sunglasses outside at all times. Now that my eyes don't hurt to look up, I scan the horizon much more than the ground.

Both.



My real focus is actually the space/distance itself, visuals/sounds themselves second. The latter two is more like the senses that constantly 'confirms' me.

It actually helps that I'd suddenly stop to let a vehicle or a person pass without needing to look ahead or look closely. I'd see it on last seconds before passing through. Or right before I might end up bumping onto something.

If I go visuals/sounds first, it'll feel like I'm going on more 'manual' and 'focused' approach. I'd likely bump on someone or something with it. But it's better for me in exploring less familiar or unsafe terrains and locations...


Always far ahead if I'm looking for something. Or sightseeing.
On the ground if I just feel like walking around for miles without any deliberate purpose or business. Or almost that feeling while waiting in a moving vehicle to stop to it's destination kind of walk.

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As a child I used to focus on the ground most of the time while walking (and find coins, lost rings, all sorts of little treasures) but at some point I've realised people don't walk like that normally - they actually look around and interact with other people
So... now I mostly look around/ahead while walking, but at the same time a part of me pays attention to the ground and "scans it" (often non-consciously). I can still find little coins in grass (which never ceases to impress my daughter) or find a four-leaf clover in a sea of 3-leaf ones. At some point my "scanner" just stops at something and I just focus my attention there, there's no effort involved

The ground tends to have more interesting rocks than the horizon.