I (try to) get around.
Nov. 19th, 2013 02:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stormdogIt's topographical agnosia again.
Maybe.
Most of you know I have some non-standard neurology. Face-blindness is a big one. I haven't written as much about how bad I am at navigating. Kenosha is laid out on a grid with numbered streets and avenues, so that's a big help. But there are a few roads that are named instead of numbered and I don't really know where they are in relation to other things. There are also a lot of stores I go to on a regular basis that I sometimes have to drive up and down a couple streets to find. I often get the three primary east-west thoroughfares (75th street, 60th street, and 52nd street) mixed up in terms of which store is on which street. I've lived here, essentially, since I was a child.
On my map use exam today, I think I did pretty well except for the part about compensating for magnetic declination. I was quite sure it was all nicely settled in my head. And in fact, if you gave me a 7.5 minute USGS topo map and a compass, I feel pretty confident in my ability to get a bearing from point A to point B accounting for magnetic declination. It's because it's all there in front of me in a visual format. On the exam, there were simple, textual questions. Your map says you want to travel on a 74 degree azimuth. The magnetic declination is 12 degrees west. What azimuth on your compass do you travel on? This is easy enough that I feel dumb for it taking me so long on the test. With a map and compass, I'd just adjust for the declination and it would be fine. But without the visual aids, I had to draw diagrams and try to overlay things in my head and I'm still not quite sure I did it right.
It's ok; I'm not freaking out about it. I'm doing fine in that class, and I expect I'll continue to. It's just kind of annoying, and even frustrating, or deleterious to my self-confidence, while I'm in the middle of it.
It's a little bit (though not entirely) like some (but not all) experiences recounted here: http://oldmankelv.awardspace.co.uk/topographicAgnosia2.html Like all issues of the human brain, I suppose one's mileage may vary. For instance, one person mentioned there who had no trouble with the New York subway system was used as an example of a facelind person who does not have topgraphic agnosia. However, I've used the New York subway system and it made perfect sense to me. It's linear and landmark (station names) based. It's moving through non-linear space based on directions that can be extremely difficult for me.
While writing this, I poked around on Google and found this page: https://www.gettinglost.ca It's centered on some ongoing research about human navigation and cognitive maps. I'm definitely going to have to look around there some.
Maybe.
Most of you know I have some non-standard neurology. Face-blindness is a big one. I haven't written as much about how bad I am at navigating. Kenosha is laid out on a grid with numbered streets and avenues, so that's a big help. But there are a few roads that are named instead of numbered and I don't really know where they are in relation to other things. There are also a lot of stores I go to on a regular basis that I sometimes have to drive up and down a couple streets to find. I often get the three primary east-west thoroughfares (75th street, 60th street, and 52nd street) mixed up in terms of which store is on which street. I've lived here, essentially, since I was a child.
On my map use exam today, I think I did pretty well except for the part about compensating for magnetic declination. I was quite sure it was all nicely settled in my head. And in fact, if you gave me a 7.5 minute USGS topo map and a compass, I feel pretty confident in my ability to get a bearing from point A to point B accounting for magnetic declination. It's because it's all there in front of me in a visual format. On the exam, there were simple, textual questions. Your map says you want to travel on a 74 degree azimuth. The magnetic declination is 12 degrees west. What azimuth on your compass do you travel on? This is easy enough that I feel dumb for it taking me so long on the test. With a map and compass, I'd just adjust for the declination and it would be fine. But without the visual aids, I had to draw diagrams and try to overlay things in my head and I'm still not quite sure I did it right.
It's ok; I'm not freaking out about it. I'm doing fine in that class, and I expect I'll continue to. It's just kind of annoying, and even frustrating, or deleterious to my self-confidence, while I'm in the middle of it.
It's a little bit (though not entirely) like some (but not all) experiences recounted here: http://oldmankelv.awardspace.co.uk/topographicAgnosia2.html Like all issues of the human brain, I suppose one's mileage may vary. For instance, one person mentioned there who had no trouble with the New York subway system was used as an example of a facelind person who does not have topgraphic agnosia. However, I've used the New York subway system and it made perfect sense to me. It's linear and landmark (station names) based. It's moving through non-linear space based on directions that can be extremely difficult for me.
While writing this, I poked around on Google and found this page: https://www.gettinglost.ca It's centered on some ongoing research about human navigation and cognitive maps. I'm definitely going to have to look around there some.
