Home > Research > Publications & Outputs > Cities have a negative impact on navigation abi...

Research

Links

Text available via DOI:

View graph of relations

Cities have a negative impact on navigation ability: evidence from 38 countries

Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article

Published

Standard

Cities have a negative impact on navigation ability: evidence from 38 countries. / Coutrot, Antoine; Manley, Ed; Conroy-Dalton, Ruth et al.
In: Biorxiv, 05.02.2020.

Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article

Harvard

Coutrot, A, Manley, E, Conroy-Dalton, R, Yesiltepe, D, Wiener, J, Hölscher, C, Hornberger, M & Spiers, H 2020, 'Cities have a negative impact on navigation ability: evidence from 38 countries', Biorxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.01.23.917211

APA

Coutrot, A., Manley, E., Conroy-Dalton, R., Yesiltepe, D., Wiener, J., Hölscher, C., Hornberger, M., & Spiers, H. (2020). Cities have a negative impact on navigation ability: evidence from 38 countries. Biorxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.01.23.917211

Vancouver

Coutrot A, Manley E, Conroy-Dalton R, Yesiltepe D, Wiener J, Hölscher C et al. Cities have a negative impact on navigation ability: evidence from 38 countries. Biorxiv. 2020 Feb 5. doi: 10.1101/2020.01.23.917211

Author

Coutrot, Antoine ; Manley, Ed ; Conroy-Dalton, Ruth et al. / Cities have a negative impact on navigation ability : evidence from 38 countries. In: Biorxiv. 2020.

Bibtex

@article{03997ea6aa85425abb38dfb551e457b8,
title = "Cities have a negative impact on navigation ability: evidence from 38 countries",
abstract = "Cultural and geographical properties of the environment have been shown to deeply influence cognition and mental health. However, how the environment experienced during early life impacts later cognitive abilities remains poorly understood. Here, we used a cognitive task embedded in a video game to measure non-verbal spatial navigation ability in 442,195 people from 38 countries across the world. We found that on average, people who reported having grown up in cities have worse navigation skills than those who grew-up outside cities, even when controlling for age, gender, and level of education. The negative impact of cities was stronger in countries with low average Street Network Entropy, i.e. whose cities have a griddy layout. The effect was smaller in countries with more complex, organic cities. This evidences the impact of the environment on human cognition on a global scale, and highlights the importance of urban design on human cognition and brain function.",
author = "Antoine Coutrot and Ed Manley and Ruth Conroy-Dalton and Demet Yesiltepe and Jan Wiener and Christoph H{\"o}lscher and Michael Hornberger and Hugo Spiers",
year = "2020",
month = feb,
day = "5",
doi = "10.1101/2020.01.23.917211",
language = "English",
journal = "Biorxiv",
publisher = "Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press",

}

RIS

TY - JOUR

T1 - Cities have a negative impact on navigation ability

T2 - evidence from 38 countries

AU - Coutrot, Antoine

AU - Manley, Ed

AU - Conroy-Dalton, Ruth

AU - Yesiltepe, Demet

AU - Wiener, Jan

AU - Hölscher, Christoph

AU - Hornberger, Michael

AU - Spiers, Hugo

PY - 2020/2/5

Y1 - 2020/2/5

N2 - Cultural and geographical properties of the environment have been shown to deeply influence cognition and mental health. However, how the environment experienced during early life impacts later cognitive abilities remains poorly understood. Here, we used a cognitive task embedded in a video game to measure non-verbal spatial navigation ability in 442,195 people from 38 countries across the world. We found that on average, people who reported having grown up in cities have worse navigation skills than those who grew-up outside cities, even when controlling for age, gender, and level of education. The negative impact of cities was stronger in countries with low average Street Network Entropy, i.e. whose cities have a griddy layout. The effect was smaller in countries with more complex, organic cities. This evidences the impact of the environment on human cognition on a global scale, and highlights the importance of urban design on human cognition and brain function.

AB - Cultural and geographical properties of the environment have been shown to deeply influence cognition and mental health. However, how the environment experienced during early life impacts later cognitive abilities remains poorly understood. Here, we used a cognitive task embedded in a video game to measure non-verbal spatial navigation ability in 442,195 people from 38 countries across the world. We found that on average, people who reported having grown up in cities have worse navigation skills than those who grew-up outside cities, even when controlling for age, gender, and level of education. The negative impact of cities was stronger in countries with low average Street Network Entropy, i.e. whose cities have a griddy layout. The effect was smaller in countries with more complex, organic cities. This evidences the impact of the environment on human cognition on a global scale, and highlights the importance of urban design on human cognition and brain function.

U2 - 10.1101/2020.01.23.917211

DO - 10.1101/2020.01.23.917211

M3 - Journal article

JO - Biorxiv

JF - Biorxiv

ER -