Final published version
Licence: Other
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - Global determinants of navigation ability
AU - Coutrot, Antoine
AU - Silva, Ricardo
AU - Manley, Ed
AU - de Cothi, Will
AU - Sami, Saber
AU - Bohbot, Veronique
AU - Wiener, Jan
AU - Hoelscher, Christoph
AU - Dalton, Ruth
AU - Hornberger, Michael
AU - Spiers, Hugo
PY - 2018/9/10
Y1 - 2018/9/10
N2 - Countries vary in their geographical and cultural properties. Only a few studies have explored how such variations influence how humans navigate or reason about space. We predicted that these variations impact human cognition, resulting in an organized spatial distribution of cognition at a planetary-wide scale. To test this hypothesis we developed a mobile-app-based cognitive task, measuring non-verbal spatial navigation ability in more than 2.5 million people, sampling populations in every nation state. We focused on spatial navigation due to its universal requirement across cultures. Using a clustering approach, we find that navigation ability is clustered into five distinct, yet geographically related, groups of countries. Specifically, the economic wealth of a nation was predictive of the average navigation ability of its inhabitants, and gender inequality was predictive of the size of performance difference between males and females. Thus, cognitive abilities, at least for spatial navigation, are clustered according to economic wealth and gender inequalities globally, which has significant implications for cross-cultural studies and multi-centre clinical trials using cognitive testing.
AB - Countries vary in their geographical and cultural properties. Only a few studies have explored how such variations influence how humans navigate or reason about space. We predicted that these variations impact human cognition, resulting in an organized spatial distribution of cognition at a planetary-wide scale. To test this hypothesis we developed a mobile-app-based cognitive task, measuring non-verbal spatial navigation ability in more than 2.5 million people, sampling populations in every nation state. We focused on spatial navigation due to its universal requirement across cultures. Using a clustering approach, we find that navigation ability is clustered into five distinct, yet geographically related, groups of countries. Specifically, the economic wealth of a nation was predictive of the average navigation ability of its inhabitants, and gender inequality was predictive of the size of performance difference between males and females. Thus, cognitive abilities, at least for spatial navigation, are clustered according to economic wealth and gender inequalities globally, which has significant implications for cross-cultural studies and multi-centre clinical trials using cognitive testing.
KW - spatial cognition
KW - cross-country analysis
KW - crowdsourcing
KW - gender differences
KW - aging
U2 - 10.1016/j.cub.2018.06.009
DO - 10.1016/j.cub.2018.06.009
M3 - Journal article
VL - 28
SP - 2861
EP - 2866
JO - Current Biology
JF - Current Biology
SN - 0960-9822
IS - 17
ER -