Finding the way: it's the caveman in him

by ppeggy | June 20, 2008 at 07:20 am

414 views | 0 Recommendations | 0 comments

I so believe this. I, for one, totally rely on landmarks, even landmarks that are no longer there but used to be. I did pretty well in Calgary but a) had lived there all my long life and b) the mountains are always in the west. Vancouver, however, has been a challenge because the mountains and the water keep moving around. One note: I have a daughter who seems to have an innate sense of direction. She has, in fact, been leading me out of large buildings since she was two.

Man may have invented OnStar, the global positioning system and Google Maps, but when it comes right down to it, the guy behind the wheel of the family sedan next to you is a caveman.

According to a joint study by the University of Lethbridge and the University of Saskatchewan, a man's ability to find his way out of anywhere armed only with a road map and his sense of direction is due to ancestral testosterone.

According to a joint study by the University of Lethbridge and the University of Saskatchewan, a man's ability to find his way out of anywhere armed only with a road map and his sense of direction is due to ancestral testosterone.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. In fact, it helps explain the stress-inducing differences between men and women when they give directions, drive and obey -- or flout -- the rules of the road.

According to a joint study by the University of Lethbridge and the University of Saskatchewan, a man's ability to find his way out of anywhere armed only with a road map and his sense of direction is due to ancestral testosterone.

During the study, which pitted men against women in a virtual water maze, researchers examined how the male hormone affects such spatial abilities as map reading, mental orientation and the ability to use north-south Euclidean directions.

"One of the big things we've observed is that men's ability to use Euclidean directions seems to be innate," says University of Saskatchewan researcher Jennifer Burkitt Hiebert.

"When we removed landmarks and the shape of the room, women could no longer complete the task, but men had no problems. Men have a better ability to use their skills, even if they don't ask for directions."