创新背景

环境的文化和地理特性已被证明可以深刻影响认知和心理健康，但一个人成长的环境如何影响后来的认知能力仍然需要进一步探究。

创新过程

法国国家科学技术中心领导的国际研究小组对影响人们空间导航能力的因素进行研究，发现居住环境的地理因素会影响成年后的方向感。在农村或城市地区和其他不同复杂程度的环境长大的人成年以后的方向感和导航能力由所差别。

研究通过比较来自38个不同国家的近40万人玩视频游戏“海洋英雄任务”的表现而获得结果。研究小组发现，每个人同年经过的街道、小路和公园等都对人的空间导航能力有影响。

人在不同的地理来源中成长，从农村到街道复杂的城市，定位和路径再现技能水平参差不齐。研究通过比较发现，在农村长大的人方向感会比在城市长大的人更好。但这种差异在不同国家情况不同，加拿大、美国、阿根廷和沙特阿拉伯差异非常明显，奥地利、法国、印度和越南则更是如此。

通过查看这些国家的主要城市地图，研究人员根据城市的布局复杂性将它们进行分类。类似芝加哥的城市排列成网格，大多数支线都是直角的；而巴黎几乎每个角度都有，形成了一个更加异构的网络。在地形复杂的城市长大会为人提供更好的方向感。

并且，研究还表明，当人们面临与童年时期经历的接近的地形时，人们通常能更好地定位自己的位置。在不同地形环境长大的人显现出不同的空间导航能力优势：来自农村地区的人擅长导航很远的距离，在直角城市长大的人则更擅长网格计划。相关研究成果《城市街道网络的熵与未来空间导航能力的关联》发表在2022年3月30日出版的《自然》上。

创新关键点

利用视频游戏铜基研究不同生长环境中的人的方向感。

创新价值

研究揭示了环境对认知的影响，并强调了城市设计在人类认知和大脑功能中的重要性。

Explore the impact of the environment on people's spatial navigation abilities through video games

An international research team led by the French National Center for Science and Technology has studied the factors that affect people's spatial navigation ability and found that geographical factors of the living environment affect the sense of direction in adulthood. People who grow up in rural or urban areas and other environments of varying complexity by their sense of direction and navigation skills as adults.

The study yielded results by comparing the performance of nearly 400,000 people from 38 different countries playing the video game Ocean Heroes Mission. The team found that the streets, paths, and parks that each person passed through in the same year had an impact on people's spatial navigation ability.

People grow up in different geographical sources, from rural areas to cities with complex streets, with uneven levels of positioning and path reproduction skills. Through comparison, studies have found that people who grew up in the countryside have a better sense of direction than those who grew up in the city. But the differences vary from country to country, with canada, the United States, Argentina and Saudi Arabia being very pronounced, and even more so in Austria, France, India and Vietnam.

By looking at maps of the major cities in these countries, the researchers categorized cities according to their layout complexity. Chicago-like cities are arranged in a grid, with most of the branch lines being right angled; Paris, on the other hand, has almost every angle, forming a more heterogeneous network. The city in complex terrain provides people with a better sense of direction.

And, research has also shown that people are generally better able to position themselves when faced with terrain close to what they experienced in childhood. People who grew up in different terrain environments showed different spatial navigation advantages: people from rural areas were good at navigating long distances, and people who grew up in right-angle cities were better at grid planning. The research result "The Correlation between entropy of urban street networks and future spatial navigation capabilities" was published in the Issue of Nature on March 30, 2022.