Do you get lost every time you leave the house?

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Thea
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02 Sep 2015, 6:48 am

Does anybody get lost even in their own neighbourhood or get disorientated going down corridors and in buildings even if they have been in them many times? Does a street look completely different to you if you look at it from a different angle or front the opposite way you came down (like you can't recognise it)?



Earthling
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02 Sep 2015, 7:08 am

Not really.
Even in an unfamiliar city I don't get lost, because I generalize the direction I'm going in, use bus station plans (you can see where the bus is heading) and don't necissarily take the same route back.



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02 Sep 2015, 7:53 am

The opposite. I usually keep fairly detailed self generated maps of my surroundings in my head and have at least a loose sense of compass orientation.

Sometimes when I am a passenger in a vehicle, I make a fairly detailed map of the place where I arrive, but have no idea of compass orientation, but I generally check by celestial cues or Google maps and then attach that information to the existing mental map.

I find it easy to visualize objects and rotate them.



Waterfalls
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02 Sep 2015, 7:58 am

Yes, and I take my phones and open google maps if I need to.



izzeme
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02 Sep 2015, 8:08 am

not really; once i have been to a place, i can find my way back there, assuming i wasn't a passenger between A and B.
I can always find where i parked my car, becouse i walked "a net distance of this far this way, and that far that way", so i can get back there. "we are too far to the right, so i take the next left"



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02 Sep 2015, 8:12 am

I think it's quite common not to be able to recognize a fairly familiar place when it is seen from a different angle.

When I go to a place I've never been to before without any preparation, I may get lost.



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03 Sep 2015, 12:06 am

Thea wrote:
Does anybody get lost even in their own neighbourhood or get disorientated going down corridors and in buildings even if they have been in them many times?

No.

But I have no spatial ability. If I enter the stairs to the block I live in and start go up the stairs to my floor, I get really disoriented if I try to figure out which direction I'm facing (is the outer door in front of me or behind me now? IDK if most people would know that, but I don't).

Thea wrote:
Does a street look completely different to you if you look at it from a different angle or front the opposite way you came down (like you can't recognise it)?

Yes, very much so. To the point where I can have difficulty even recognizing it in pictures because they're taken from other angles than how I see it.


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03 Sep 2015, 12:52 am

I live where I grew up and have seen everything from every angle probably 10000 times, so, no, I don't get lost here. But I am always amazed at how different things (in other places) look when I'm going back the way I came. If it's somewhere I've never been before I will probably get lost if I try the return trip without GPS.



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03 Sep 2015, 1:08 am

My spacial reasoning is ok, my sense of direction is good and I still do this. I have good mental maps too, for me I think it's a matter of forgetting where I'm going. I do so equally often without leaving home.


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Ben_Is_My_Only_God
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03 Sep 2015, 2:43 pm

No, I have an innate sense of direction and I enjoy "inventing" different routes to travel get to places.


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teksla
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03 Sep 2015, 3:24 pm

Nope. Things do look different from a different angle, but i have always had a very good sense of direction (ever since i was 12moths old)


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03 Sep 2015, 3:28 pm

I'm usually OK when I'm in familiar streets, though sometimes I don't recognise the same street if I'm going along it in the other way from what I'm used to. And if there are a lot of streets that all look the same to me, I get lost easily. Often there are features that I guess most people would notice, but I seem to be on a different wavelength so my landmarks, when I have them, can be unusual. I suppose I screen out a lot of the features.

When I had a job, I worked for a long time in a long building that had one corridor. When I moved to a 2-corridor building, it took me years to adjust to the new complication. I hardly ever knew which of the 2 corridors I was walking down. To make matters worse, the walls and doors were pretty uniform and featureless, and there were several floors, all painted in the same colours.

I find maps and floor plans useful, but I can have a hard time relating a map to the actual place as viewed from the ground, especially if the ground isn't fairly flat and if there are tall buildings or trees blocking the view. And I'm not good at remembering what I've seen when I've looked at a map and then put it back into my pocket, so I'm constantly having to stop and take another look at it, and every time I turn a corner I have to think hard to work out how to turn the map - I can hardly relate a map to the actual place at all unless it's pointing the correct way.



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03 Sep 2015, 3:47 pm

Yes! My sense of direction is awful. I still have real trouble with left and right like I have to really think about it. And I frequently get lost on familiar journeys (Googlemaps is also my friend). If my husband drives me to the supermarket and parks up while I go in 9 times out of 10 I can't find the car when I come out. Even if I make a real mental note of which way to go for the reverse journey. He knows what I'm like now though and if I've been a particularly long time he will get out and wave :lol:
I'm due to graduate from university at Christmas and I still have difficulty finding my lecture rooms even though they are all in the same building and never change. I tend to just tag along with people I know.