Welcome to Gettinglost.ca! In this website, we hope to provide easily accessible scientific information on human navigation and orientation. Specifically, we hope to increase general awareness of Developmental Topographical Disorientation (DTD), a newly-discovered condition in which individuals get lost in very familiar environments, throughout their whole lives, without any brain damage or other cognitive disorders.
You can now follow our research updates on Twitter @giuiaria
Who we are
Gettinglost.ca is managed by NeuroLab, a cognitive neuroscience research laboratory at the University of Calgary directed by Dr. Giuseppe Iaria. We perform psychological studies in real and virtual environments, with the goal of understating how people make sense of their surroundings, and how the brain is responsible for this ability. Additionally, we want to gain a richer understanding of DTD, by observing behaviour, as well as the structure and function of the brain using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and characterize the cause of this disorder. Following this, we want to help rehabilitate people that get lost easily, including people with DTD, the elderly, and individuals with acquired brain injuries or other neurological conditions. By using strategic interventions embedded in video games and real environments, we want to help people improve their ability to understand and navigate throughout their environment. Finally, we also investigate the spatial abilities of children at different stages of development, with the goal of understanding exactly how spatial abilities develop in children. This information would allow us to develop a diagnostic tool for children who may have a spatial learning disability.
https://www.gettinglost.ca/content.php
I checked this out as I have a poor sense of direction and did the tests.
Cambridge face memory
In the Cambridge face memory test, you were required to memorize the faces of six different individuals, and subsequently identify these individuals from other faces that you had not memorized.
On the Cambridge face memory task, you scored 39 out of 72, with an average reaction time of 2.79 seconds. Your performance on this task indicates that you remember faces with difficulty.
Four Mountains Task Feedback
In each trial of this task, you were asked to view and memorize a scene, which had four distinct mountains in the foreground. After a brief delay, you were shown four scenes, and were asked to identifiy which scene had the same topography as the one you memorized. However, all the scenes provided as response options were viewed from a different position than the scene you memorized. Additionally, the colour of the ground and the position of the sun had changed. This required you to memorize the shape and relative positions of the four mountains in the forground to identify the correct response. This task was designed to assess your short-term visuo-spatial memory, as well as your ability to imagine a scene from a different perspective.
On the four mountains task, you scored 8 out of 20, with an average reaction time of 4.55 seconds. Your performance on this task may indicate that you have difficulty or inability to remember or manipulate scenes in your mind
Mental Rotation Task Feedback
In each trial of this task, you were asked to view a pair of objects made entirely from cubes. Each pair of objects was either the exact same object, or one was a mirror image of the other. To perform this task you would need to mentally rotate one of the two objects to be congruent with the other, and then compare if they are the same object or not. This task assesses your ability to mentally manipulate objects without an explicit demand to memorize the objects.
On the mental rotation task, you scored 43 out of 80, with an average reaction time of 2.25 seconds. Your performance on this task may indicate that you have difficulty or inability to mentally rotate objects.
Spatial Configuration Task Feedback
In this task, you were placed in a space-like virtual environment which was populated with five distinct, simple objects. For each trial of this task, you were asked to indicate which object you were looking from, based on your current viewpoint. To respond correctly, you would need to carefully track the objects you see as the camera moves, and hold in mind their positions when they are not in view. This test was designed to assess this ability of rapidly forming a mental representation of the positions and identities of objects in an environment.
On the spatial configuration task, you scored 17 out of 60, with an average reaction time of 3.56 seconds. Your performance on this task may indicate that you have difficulty or inability to rapidly form a mental representation of the locations of objects in a new environment.