EventsTalk · Members only
The “Cognitive Map” Without the Mind’s Eye
Dr Adrienne Li, York University
How do you find your way somewhere new?
Your cognitive map is your sense of where places are and how they connect. In aphantasia it’s thought to be largely spared: you can know where things are without seeing them, and many people with aphantasia do well on standard cognitive tests.
So why do so many of us still get lost?
What the study found
Dr Adrienne Li and her team put that question to the test with Sea Hero Quest, a navigation game first made for dementia research and since used to study wayfinding in hundreds of thousands of people around the world.
In the study, 63 people with aphantasia and 99 without learned maps, then steered through places that grew steadily harder: longer routes, more touch points and turns, poor visibility, more to hold in mind at once.
On the easy levels, the two groups did as well as each other.
On the hardest, people with aphantasia took substantially longer. They also rated their own spatial ability and memory lower.
More time studying the map beforehand didn’t explain it. Talking yourself through the route, the usual workaround, didn’t seem to make a difference either.
In new places, and when the route gets complex, mental images seem to do work that words can’t easily replace. These are averages across two groups, so they can’t tell you how any one person finds their way.
What you’ll take away
- Why “spatial memory is spared” is only half the story
- What makes a route hard: its length, its turns, the decisions along it and how far you can see
- Words for the next time someone treats getting lost as carelessness
How the hour runs
Adrienne presents the study in plain words for about half an hour, then takes members’ questions live. What would you ask her about how you find your way?
The talk is for members. Register on this page and we’ll email you the link. Members keep the full recording, with every question, and a shorter cut goes on YouTube afterwards.
About Adrienne
Dr Adrienne Li is a postdoctoral researcher in the Rosenbaum Memory Lab at York University and a clinical neuropsychologist with the St. Michael’s Hospital Family Health Team. She previously worked at the Telerehab Centre for Acquired Brain Injury at University Health Network. She studies spatial and autobiographical memory, how people differ in mental imagery, and how new technology can widen access to neuropsychology.