"Place Blindness," being directionally challenged

Post Reply New Topic

I recently read an article that talked about some Asperger's people having "place blindness." Even if you've been somewhere a million times, you could still get confused figuring out which way to go. I know I definitely have this problem. I have just recently bought myself a GPS system and feel much better about going places I'm not so familiar with (even though I've lived in the same city for 25 years I still don't know where I'm going half the time).

Anyone else experience this? It makes me feel better knowing why I have this problem and that I'm not just stupid.

I'm not sure I can lay claim to that disorder, but I can tell you that I am genuinely amazed by people who drive someplace once and then remember exactly where it is. I can do it if the route is simple, without many turns, but otherwise I need to see it on a map to orient myself and give myself some perspective, and then I have a picture of the map in my mind rather than the landmarks.

"Directionally challenged"?! Wossat then?!

Do you mean 'lost', perchance?

Generally no. I usually have a general idea of N W E and S. I only get turned around in buildings or crowded places usually, like Las Vegas.

It's still easy to get "lost" in some cities. For example, here in LA, the city has a grid layout (it's actually a satellite city with a superimposed grid layout) so you would think it'd be easy to navigate it. However a lot of streets are discontinuous. They dead end and then start up again after some type of barrier...maybe the city was just too lazy to put a signal in to have it cross a busy street so they just dead ended it on both sides of the street. Or if they do cross other streets sometimes they aren't aligned on both sides so to turn right on one street, you have to drive one more block than you would have to to turn left on it.

The city planners also did not have the foresight to put in enough left hand turn lanes. Sometimes side streets will actually go across a busy street but there will be no signal so it'd impossible to actually get across it or make a left hand turn onto the street.

However, the traffic in the city is usually bad enough that you have enough time to think about which way you actually have to go to get someplace seemingly simple to go.

For example, there's a market down the street and around the corner from me that I can't return from the same way I came. I must drive there one way, and drive back another because of the way the streets are.

Then in Downtown a lot of the streets are one way. That means, unless you have your rout planned carefully it's very easy to spend 45 minutes trying to get where you need to go even if where you need to go is 500 feet away.

Might be the reason I get lost on busses all the time.

Nah, but I have occasionally been just a mite bewildered. (Daniel Boone)

I got my first traffic ticket not long after I first got my license, and that was for running a red light in order to keep up with someone else I was following to get back to a familiar street ... and then the officer told me I would have been just fine (rather than fined!) if I had waited for the light and then kept going straight.

Elementary school only had one long hallway for grades one through three, then fouth grade had three rooms in an area all its own as did fifth and sixth (together), so I did okay finding my way around there. Grades seven through nine were no problem in a L-shaped building with two long halls, but my sophomore year was a nightmare inside a full city block covered by several interconnected buildings with up to as many as three floors. After that, high school was not quite as bad.

One job I had a few years ago was in a very large building where I got lost a lot for the first several weeks, and now I am living in a new town where I do not leave the house by myself unless I absolutely must since I only know how to go to just a few places and back on three streets without fear of getting lost.

I'm usually very good with directions, and most of the time I only need to go to someplace once in order to find my way there again. In addition, I rarely get lost. And when I do, I know quite a few strategies for finding my way back again (one of them is the use of landmarks).

"Place Blindness" can happen to just about anyone, it isn't really exclusive to aspies. I know quite a few NT's who can't find their way around their own street even to save their life. Luckily, there is GPS for that...

There are many moments at school where I forget which way to turn and get lost on the way to class even though my high school campus is small and I've gone the same way hundreds of times

If I drive the route, I can memorize it pretty quickly. Often once is enough, three times at most. But if I'm a passenger and someone else is driving, I can ride along a million times and never remember how we got there.

I've always found it peculiar that I can drive a route I do know every day for two years and then suddenly one day notice something I've never seen before - and everyone else laughs at me and says "Dude, that's been there the whole time." Are you sure??

Funny. Temple Grandin recommends cab driving to Aspies because, according to her, we're good at remembering street names and directions. I've doubted the validity of that as a generalization ever since I read it, even though I was a cab driver for about three years, many moons ago. Interestingly, she also recommends NOT being a dispatcher because there's so much going on. I think I agree with her on that one. It's pretty tough dealing with answering phones, and talking to up to twenty drivers at once, and remembering not only where all the drivers are (who are in MOTION!), as well as every fare that hasn't yet been picked up, PLUS where all the fare are GOING that are already in the cabs! I mean, yeah, it's all there on trip tickets, but sometimes there'd be twenty of those on the board, and another fifty or sixty waiting to go on it!

Yeah, I can find my way around pretty good I guess. As soon as I got my license, I used my car to get away from everyone, and just drive, EVERYWHERE. Cruising and listening to music was my isolation then. I never knew where I was going, and would purposefully get lost. I loved being in places I'd never seen before, and still do. I guess it's from that obsession that I became very good at it.

I think it may be what you choose as your "isolation." We all tend to like to be alone, and if you choose not to leave home, then "place blindness" might be what you end up with. If you choose to do what I did, well...

Last edited by MrXxx on 19 Jun 2010, 11:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Big time. I've been to the local amusement park probably 20-25 times, and today, I got lost in it. Big time lost. It's not very big, and everyone else in my city can get to to any ride by name, but not me. I have to wander.

When I read this I saw myself right away, as just a couple of days ago I spent more than an hour on a simple errand that should have taken perhaps 20-25 minutes. I made FIVE major directional mistakes driving to my bank and to a drugstore from work, places I've been to many times in the 5 years I've lived here.

I've always had problems with this-- I rely heavily on recognizing landmarks to help steer me in the right direction. But, if I'm, for example, at an intersection where going left vs right is unclear, i.e., there aren't distinct landmarks, even if I've navigated that intersection many times, I often go the wrong way.

I bought a GPS a few years ago which has been a lifesaver many times; however, I didn't think to use it when going to the bank/drugstore the other day--I really hadn't suspected even I would have *that* much trouble!

I also can't process verbal directions given more than one step at a time. Stopping and asking a stranger how to get somewhere is useless for me--I get confused and pretty much just tune them out pretty quickly. As much as I appreciate their attempt to help, I can do about as well driving around and finding where I need to go by chance.

I get lost from time to time, but I usually find my way, except for that one time, that I was in Gastown, in Early 2007, before I've gone all weird and punkish.

Well like, in school it took me a lot longer than other people to remember where my classrooms were, because, I mean.. come on, the halls and doors and everything all looked really similar. But if I walk around a city for a little while I can learn it really well and find my way around easy because the landscape and the buildings and neighborhoods are all pretty distinctive. (In all the places I've lived, anyway. Maybe some cities are more uniform.) But I'm still pretty bad with like, maps. Like the map of my local group of towns/cities.. everyone knows it but me, and they can tell you what's south of what and everything. I don't drive, but neither do a lot of them, so I don't know what's up with that.

I definately have this! It takes me a good 10-15 times driving somewhere to learn how to get there..sometimes more if it's a little more tricky than usual. LOL Thank goodness for GPS's. I remember getting lost in my high school that I went to for 4 years... ridiculous!
Someone mentioned never learning a route if you are the passenger.. I'm the same and also going the same route for years and noticing something "new" that's always been there. LOL I can only laugh at myself!

How about having to reverse the route you just took? That always freaks me out. I have to concentrate and remember REALLY hard on which way is which and what turn I made last so I can make it first.

I believe it. I take the same bus every day and still get confused whenever it turns around corners.