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Houkou-onchi (方向オンチ in Japanese), or getting lost (also referred to as spatial disorientation (Dudchenko 2010)), is a common topic in Japan, and a number of books and articles have been published (Murakoshi, 2001; Shingaki, 2001). There is also literature related to houkou-onchi based on cognitive psychology. For example, Shingaki (2001) found that a person required good mental rotation abilities in order to successfully locate directions to a certain place using a map. Hakoda (2010) confirmed the related ability to rotate mental representations of two-dimensional and three-dimensional objects in the human mind. In other words, if the direction a person faces and the direction of a map correspond, directions becomes easier to understand because less calculation of rotations in the mind are required. Shingaki (2001) also stated that people who get lost tend to care about something irrelevant to the route while walking; for example, other pedestrians or cars. In contrast, others who are not prone to getting lost care mainly about landmarks which are helpful to understand directions.
It is also known that a person can pay more attention to certain things while walking or exploring. For instance, in an experiment using a driving game, a significant difference in neural activation was detected when a subject was viewing a target object as opposed to a non-target object (Mollison, 2005). In other words, objects that a person cares and notices while walking are used to remember routes to places.
Tversky (1993) found people can form coherent mental representations of the spatial relations among landmarks whether learned from direct experience, or learned vicariously through language. Subjects could produce a correct map from learning descriptions about it. Tversky (1993) stated it’s inefficient to remember a route as successive snapshots of the world because this would not allow recognition or navigation from other points of view.
Therefore, it is thought that people remember a route by finding certain things (e.g. objects, landmarks) and understanding the connections among them. But things they care about can be different. Besides, in terms of understanding a map, a cognitive ability named ‘mental rotation’ is required, so the differences among people’s cognitive ability and attention to things can indicate what factors influence who can become lost (cf.Dudchenko, 2010).