Inner navigation
Subtitle: why we get lost and how we find our way
By: Erik Jonsson
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2002
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 347
ISBN-13: 9780743222068
Subjects: Psychologische aspecten; Mapas cognoscitivos (Psicología); Ruimtelijk inzicht; Geographical perception; Aspectos psicológicos; Navigatie; Navegación; Navigation; Spatial behavior; Percepción geográfica; Conducta espacial; Cognitieve kaarten; Cognitive maps (Psychology); Psychological aspects
Description: "Why are we so often disoriented when we come up from the subway? Do we really walk in circles when we lose our bearings in the wilderness? How - and why - do we get lost at all?" "In this book, Erik Jonsson, a Swedish-born engineer who has spent a lifetime exploring navigation over every terrain, from the crowded cities of Europe to the emptiness of the desert, gives readers extraordinary new insights into the human way-finding system." "Written for the nonscientist, Inner Navigation explains the array of physical and psychological cues the brain uses to situate us in space and build its "cognitive maps" - the subconscious maps it employs to organize landmarks. Humans, Jonsson explains, also possess an intuitive direction frame - an internal compass - that keeps these maps oriented (when it functions properly) and a dead-reckoning system that constantly updates our location on the map as we move through the world. Even the most cynical city-dweller will be amazed to learn how much of this innate sense we use every day as we travel across town or around the world."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 335-337) and index.
Table of contents: title: Starting out. Strange happenings.; title: Cognitive maps. Designing a workable spatial system; title: An introduction to cognitive maps; title: The mentally invisible stop sign; title: Who turned the Madeleine around?; title: Finding cars in parking lots; title: A backwoodsman goes to town; title: Distance estimates in cognitive maps; title: Pictures from an expedition; title: The life of trails; title: The role of landmarks in cognitive maps; title: Crossing a field; title: When the dead reckoning system slips.; title: Digging up old stories and analyzing them. Adari way-finding in the Sahara; title: The cognitive sun compass; title: The cognitive wind compass; title: Returning directly to the starting point; title: Singing in the fog; title: A report from a salty place [the Runn of Cutch]; title: Try to go straight, but don't try too hard; title: Strategies for walking in a straight line; title: An old story from a cool place [Bear Islands, north of Siberia]; title: Aboriginal and underwater way-finding.; title: Walking in circles when lost. The Skogsnuva fairy tale [from Sweden]; title: Going in a circle on the prairie; title: Going astray in the Canadian and Swedish forests; title: How come we walk in circles?; title: Reversals of orientation. Forde's letter to the editor of Nature; title: Strange morning awakenings; title: When trains take off in the wrong direction; title: Indoor misorientation; title: Analyzing misorientations; title: [Joseph] Peterson in a streetcar in Chicago; title: Professor Peterson's misery in Minneapolis; title: Tales of a cosmopolitan lady [Franziska Baumgarten]; title: The topsy-turvy globe-trotter [A. Kirschmann]; title: Causes of misorientation; title: The San Francisco effect; title: Crossing a ridge without getting to the other side; title: Deterioration in our spatial system in old age; title: Spatial memory slips causing reversals; title: The role of gestalt in misorientations; title: Do humans have a magnetic sense?; title: Summing up and looking ahead.