All of afeller's Comments + Replies

Since you are bad at orientation, I suggest that you use tools to help you. For instance, carry a map of your usual roaming area with you, physical or virtual. One of the great things about tiny handheld tablets like the Archos 28 is that you can you can just put an image into it and readily have access to it at all times, or use google maps if you are in an area with wireless internet. If you have a large physical map you wish to digitize, scan it in sections and stitch it together with an image editing program. Or make a map of places like your apartment building yourself that you can use. Also, carry a compass with you for help in unfamiliar locations. For unaided orientation, you can use the sun and/or shadows as a way to determine rough estimations of east and west (the sun raises from the east and sets in the west, so any shadow in the morning should point west and shadows in the afternoon should point east). This is specially useful in places where streets are oriented North South and East West, since an approximation is all that you need in order to know which orientation is which. Personally, I liked maps since I was a little kid and have always been great at navigation and orientation. I automatically make a bird's eye view mental map of whichever outside area I am in and a 3D model of any buildings I happen to enter. These mental copies often contain errors in small details and scale/distances, but become more accurate as I retread the same place again and again. I don't know if this is possible to learn to do that, but you could try building a mental map by noticing what is around you and noticing where it is located in relation to other stuff.

Not sure if that is actually needed. As long as you find your way, you do not need to know which direction something is in from every position.

What I do is I pick one direction that I care about and identify it - that way is north, or that way is towards the street, or whatever. Then I notice where that key direction is relative to my body, e.g. the street is behind me. Then when I'm walking, every time I turn I keep track of which way that key direction is now - I turned left and now the street is to my left, I turned left again and now I'm facing it, etc. It can help to think about the part of your body that is towards the key the direction - e.g. if the street is to my left I pay extra attention to my left arm and maybe even imagine pointing or gesturing to my left with it. I don't go through this full conscious routine that often - a lot of it I can do intuitively - but I do use it in some cases, like when I'm getting off a train at an unfamiliar station. I'll notice when I plan my trip that the train is going east and I need to head north when I leave the station. Then when I get off the train I note which way it was headed, and I keep track of that direction as I wind my way out of the train station. Then once I get outside I'll reorient myself to identify which way I want to go (the train was going in that direction, so I want to go left relative to that direction).

From what you say I think my orientation skills are quite a bit better compared to yours, though I’m not one of those people who always know where they are and which way is everything else. As far as I can tell, based on just introspection and comparing my “success rate” for various orientation tasks, there are quite a few different more-or-less specialized mechanism in the mind that handle this, and when they are employed differs with the kind of task. As far as I can tell, my brain at least deals very differently with, for example, navigating a well-known territory and navigating in places I don’t know personally (even though I may have seen a map). When I go through places I know well—the areas I frequent around places I lived a few days in—I navigate and pick routes almost instantly; I can walk or drive quite complex routes, even routes I never followed before (but through places I know), without ever thinking or paying attention (I mean, I pay attention to the road, not to the route). But this seems to be based on a type of memory that associates the directions relative to where I am with destinations. For example, it often happens that I don’t remember, say, what places follow after the next turn, but I know that I have to go that way to reach some destination; once I turn I’ll remember the “next step”. But it’s not a memory of “routes”, because I can and do on occasion do the same thing with routes that are not common, as long as they pass through places I know. (E.g., I might do a detour that never happened before unconsciously.) Also, it’s not quite spatial memory, because for places like this I don’t have any awareness of their relative location on a map. (That is, I can follow an instinctive route between two distant points, even a route I never followed exactly before, but I can’t tell afterwards if the destination was north or south of the starting point.) However, in places I’m not yet familiar with things seem to be very different. Generally I can

I'm quite incapable of doing that too. I find the confusion an interesting experience, because the reasoning required seems quite simple --- but I can't do it. I suspect it's a module that's under-developed in me. I also am bad at visual thinking in general. A simple test for any readers who want to indulge me: close your eyes and think of your kitchen. How would you count how many cupboards do you have in it? I have to think of what's in the separate cupboards, and do other similar kinds of reasoning. Most people seem to be able to call to mind an accurate picture of the kitchen, and count as though they were standing in it.

It's both inborn and learned. (Like a musical ear: you get what you get, but you can make it better if you work at it). A bird's eye view is the way to do it, there was an interesting bit on Radiolab recently about languages that rely on dead reckoning, and people keep track of it with a bird's eye map in their heads. If you can figure it out with pencil and paper, do that often. Eventually you will be able to do it without the pencil and paper. If you aren't generally good at mental representations of spatial or visual things, it will take longer.

Sounds good. If anyone else reading this tries this, please report back on how well it works for you!

On the other hand, some recording technologies make your voice sound higher and thinner than it really is. Voice answering machines are really bad about this. But for enunciation, rhythm, and that sort of thing, this should be very helpful.

Do you know of a modern recording technology that would make this kind of recording convenient? An iOS app would be best, I think; alternatively a computer software. I can well imagine recording myself reading the poems with a cassette recorder, but not with any software that I know.