NAVIGATION
Navigation is a primitive brain function that predates language
and has played a major role in the survival and success of the human
race. Pure navigation required us to hold a mental image of the
shape of a route and be able to navigate through that mental projection.
Some scientists believe that because of our hunter-gatherer past
and the different roles played by men and women during that period
of evolution, men have developed better navigational skills than
women.
Just how strong are your navigational skills?
The Test
For this test, our contestants had to navigate their way through
a simple map. Easy, right?
Well, not quite!
Each contestant were shown a basic map representing the course
and route. They had 45 seconds to study and memorise it under articulatory
suppression. So while trying to memorise the map, they all had to
say the sequence A, B, C, D, E, F, G out loud as many times as they
could during the 45 seconds. This stops them verbalising a route
through the map, from them learning the lefts and rights they might
take to get to the finish line.
After seeing the map, they got in a car ready to navigate the route
they'd just studied. Except that they were then asked to navigate
the route in reverse. So the start was now the finish
and the finish was now the start. They now needed to rotate the
mental image of the map in their mind.
Once they began driving they had to make snap decisions on which
way to go: Left, Right, Straight Ahead and so on. But they had to
make these decisions under pressure - our expert shouted out, for
example, "Decision, Left or Right" at these key navigation
points.
If they made a correct decision, the driver continued without stopping.
If they made a wrong decision, the driver initially went that way,
then skidded to a halt and reversed back to the key navigation point.
Our experts then informed them that their decision was wrong and
asked them for another one. If they failed to make any decision,
the car stopped until a decision was made and a one point penalty
was added to their score. An extra penalty point was added for each
wrong turn made. They were penalised one wrong turn if they hesitated
in making a decision and only their first answer was taken.
After the test was completed, each contestant had two minutes to
sketch a map of the route - these were used as a tiebreaker if any
scores were the same.
The Experts
Dr. Alastair Nicholls
- Qinetiq - Centre For Human Science.
Why Is It Superhuman To Be Able To Navigate
Well?
Mental maps and rotation are a staple of modern intelligence tests
- but our ability to perform in them varies considerably. To successfully
complete this test requires a range of abilities and skills. In
theory, men are supposed to be better at this than women - but anyone
can learn techniques to improve their navigational ability. Indeed,
people who are good navigators are able to use special memory techniques
to learn huge amounts of information quickly.
Scoring
Each contestant was scored in two ways:
- by the number of wrong turns they made and
- the overall time taken to complete the route
If two or more contestants made the same number of wrong turns,
they were then ranked respectively with regard to the time taken
to complete the route. If they were still tied after that, their
sketches of the map were used as a tiebreaker.
Our Superhuman was the contestant who was best able to memorise
the shape of the course from the map and then to navigate through
that shape.
Click here to see the
final results >
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