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People who grow up in the country have a better sense of direction says study
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We all get lost from time to time, but new research has found that you're less likely to if you grew up somewhere green!
Researchers at a London university used a mobile video game to test people's navigational skills (which just means how good you are at directions).
The scientists found that people from the countryside performed better than people who grew up in cities.
They say this shows the environment we live in as children has an impact on how good our sense of direction is when we're older.
What do you think? Are you ace at directions even though you grew up in a city? Or do you get helplessly lost in the rural area you live in? Let us know in the comments!
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400,000 people took part, playing a game called Sea Hero Quest.
In it, the participants had to navigate a boat and find checkpoints on a map.
Image source, Getty Images
"We found that growing up outside cities appears to be good for the development of navigational abilities, and this seems to be influenced by the lack of complexity of many street networks in cities," said the lead researcher, Hugo Spiers, of University College London.
Or in other words, they think the reason people from rural areas are better at directions than people from cities is because country landscapes are a lot more unpredictable and complicated than carefully laid out city streets. That makes it more important to think carefully about where you're going, and remember where you've been.
Image source, Getty Images
But one of the other authors of the study, Antoine Coutrot of the University of Lyon, explained this also meant people who grew up in cities with trickier layouts, like Paris and Prague, did better than those from cities with grid-like street plans, such as Chicago.
"Growing up somewhere with a more complex layout of roads or paths might help with navigational skills as it requires keeping track of direction when you're more likely to be making multiple turns at different angles, while you might also need to remember more streets and landmarks for each journey," he said.