Discussion: How Orienteers think

I have noticed, at least among my friends, that a large proportion of them are good at analytical activities (mostly maths). This intrigued me, as a much smaller proportion of my non-orienteering friends are good at maths. This suggests a link between orienteering and analytical stuff.

However, the brain has two hemispheres (left and right) each of which is popularly reputed to have specific functions, known as brain lateralisation. The left hemisphere deals with the analytical, logical processing (such as maths) while the right hemisphere deals with more "big-picture" things, like making sure a sentence makes sense and spatial tasks, like map reading, obviously a key skill in orienteering.

This suggests that there is no link, as there is no neurological connection between analysis and map reading, but the evidence that I (and possibly you) have seen weighs strongly in favour of a link, and we have reached a dead end.

Instead of just thinking some more, I decided that given the convenient access (attackpoint) I have to a large number of orienteers, that some real world data would be a more appropriate method of investigation. So, if you have the merest sliver of free time or the tiniest hint of inclination, could you please do this "Hemispheric Dominance Test" and then fill out this form (the results can be seen here):


Any suggestions or contributions (other than the survey) are very very welcome

Can't see results on the spreadsheet as I "don't have access" (even if I sign in with a Google ID).

Interesting survey, and I would be interested in the results summary at some point.

Jon and I've been thinking a lot about this, too - trying to add a component to our tryouts at USMA that measures aptitude to learn orienteering quickly. We've noticed the math connection, too - there is a profile of a cadet that will be very good at orienteering very quickly, and it's definitely someone with strong math and reasoning skills. Possibly part of the reason we have very few humanities majors on the team (and those that are are also good at math)? Either that, or we have a self-perpetuating Geographical Information Sciences and Civil/Mechanical Engineering affinity...

I'd be interested to see your results if you can post them at some point in time - I couldn't get to the spreadsheet either.

You might be confusing "maths" with arithmetic (a common mistake). Arithmetic is decidedly left brained, but real math (calculus and above) is much more right brain. Of course, the brain isn't really that simple, but there's definitely a correlation. In undergrad, I noticed that roughly half the math majors were left handed (a sample of around 100). In grad school (same sample size) that proportion had risen to more like 2 out of 3.

As for an apptitude test, just send them out on the Orange course. Any teenager with real potential will become proficient at that level pretty quickly.

Handedness * Are you left or right handed

So how do you define handedness?

sorry, the results should be visible now

handedness is your dominant hand, ie the hand you use for writing etc

Here's a summary of the stuff so far:
Total entries: 77

Gender	#	%age
Male	49	64%
Female	28	36%

Handedness	#	%age
Right	63	82%
Left	14	18%

Right Hemisphere average responses: 10.0
Left Hemisphere average responses: 8.85

Mathematical Aptitude	#	%age
1	1	1%
2	3	4%
3	12	16%
4	33	43%
5	28	36%

Seems that there is a skew towards the right hemisphere

handedness is your dominant hand, ie the hand you use for writing etc

I guess it's the etc part that's bothering me. I write with one hand and do most of the etc things with the other. And of course as a cross-country skier, I eat with both hands! :-)

again sorry to everyone trying to look at the results, I forgot to change the access privileges :( and thank you to everyone who has completed the survey so far :D

as for the handedness part, it probably doesn't matter, either will do

a bit of searching about the hemispheres and mathematics revealed this study:
Overall course grade was used to measure mathematical success/failure. Using a dichotomous left/right lateralization classification, descriptive statistics indicated that successful Precalculus I [college algebra] students were usually left dominant while unsuccessful students were usually right dominant. Successful Precalculus II [trigonometry, vectors, conics, and complex numbers] students tended to be right dominant, while unsuccessful students were usually left dominant. No lateralization differences were observed in successful Analysis I [beginning calculus for mathematics/science majors] students, but unsuccessful Analysis I students were more often left dominant.

Is the handedness data reversed? Supposedly 1/6 of people are left-handed. The results as shown would be very unlikely.

Yeah, looks like from the spreadsheet that there are indeed more righties. I was skerd for a sec there.

yes the handedness data was reversed, thanks for picking that up

Early data is suggesting a significant result, in this survey more than 50% of respondents are classified as right hemisphere dominant, while in the general population it is more like 5 - 10% (second paragraph on this page)

Do you have the results from the hemispheric dominance test for a control group of non-orienteers too?

Not exactly, but the study in my post above suggests the ratio is about 90%:10% in favour of left hemispheric dominance. I have no control with the test Im using, if anyone has any suggestions for methods of obtaining a data from a control group for this specific test, please...

Are orienteers who frequent AP different to orienteers not found on this site?

In a word, yes.

not bad data for a PIP though huoff!?

I'd ask if the study was actually involving only orienteers as AP has expanded (evolved) beyond that.

thanks, but, sorry, for my ignorance, what's a PIP?

Another summary:
Total entries: 126

Gender	#	%age
Male	86	68%
Female	40		32%

Handedness	#	%age
Right	103	82%
Left	23	18%

Right Hemisphere average responses: 10.1
Left Hemisphere average responses: 8.9

Hemisphere of respondents	#	%age
Left	55	44%
Right	71	56%

Mathematical Aptitude	#	%age
1	1	1%
2	5	4%
3	19	15%
4	50	40%
5	51	40%

PIP? Picture in Picture....no

There now is an automated summary page (see Summary sheet on the spreadsheet), and I think PIP means "personal interest project"? (ahh the power of google :D)

i have to do a pip in society and culture. i should be doing it right now actually. i think its an interesting topic but it would need to be tweaked as its definitely more scientific research than social research.
i thought it was fun thanks huon :) & my results made sense to me.

Not trying to rain on your parade, but the results are entirely meaningless without some non-orienteering control group, which you may or may not have. (OK, you can probably conclude that survey respondents are statistically more likely to be male than the population, and probably more likely to have inflated views of their mathematical aptitude, but the left-/right-brain stuff tells you nothing without knowing something about the general population's answers to that quiz.)

hold on, so if you are right-handed you are more likely to be good at maths than to be female?

"...just send them out on the Orange course."

Eric, interestingly enough, this isn't as predictive as you might think. We hold tryouts over a period of about 4 days, and get about 50 cadets competing for 6-7 spaces. We have them run 3 score-Os (yellow to orange level) on the main campus area, which combines urban and woods orienteering. The results generally tell us who to look at, but among those 10 or so cadets, they don't always tell us who is going to suddenly "get it" and just take off, meeting our criteria to run their age category in a matter of 2 months, while it may take others over a year. What we're noticing that many of the cadets who "get it" the fastest have in common is that they tend to be pretty bright (true of most cadets, however) and good at their math classes, which at USMA are generally mathematical modeling and calculus. Jon did a little digging at the beginning of the year to look at studies that might help us predict this aptitude (something in addition to the field tests), but didn't come up with anything that was consistently predictive enough to be useful - there always seemed to be an exception, and I know we could find a exception or two on our team of someone who's a great orienteer and not great at math...

If only it were this easy!

Have you guys ever thought of doing a study? You could put together some longitudinal data, track people over time...

I'm at least kind of serious. It seems like there are lots of interesting variables you have access to.

Does you guys (USMA Orienteering) give a paper aptitude test? Perhaps something where the cadets have to matching map snippets to depictions of terrain? And why score-O style courses?

Score-O style is used because it is easier to get the 50 people out at once. We do a little bit of spreading it out (groups of 8 every 2 min or something similar) but we could not do that much of a start window unfortunately

tell us who is going to suddenly "get it" and just take off, meeting our criteria to run their age category in a matter of 2 months, while it may take others over a year.

Well, that really what I was suggesting. I suppose I should have said, "send them out on Orange courses for a couple months and see who is able to do it on the run. I agree that observation over a shorter timeframe could yield significantly less conclusive results. In particular, the people who get it right off are often inclined to immediately start pushing the pace and making BIG mistakes. It takes a few tries before you realize that footspeed isn't what wins these things (at least not below the elite level - and nobody gets there quickly).

And therein lies the challenge - like most sports teams, we have a week-long tryout window before we have to finalize our rosters, so more that 3 courses in 3 days just isn't possible, and we don't get to keep extra new recruits long enough to evaluate them over an entire semester. Something about the Academy needing to have cadets on the parade field on weekends...(drill practice is at the same time as Orienteering practice!)

Of those cadets we took on this year, the Score-O results from tryouts were not necessarily predictive of who has picked it up the fastest, although I do think they led us to select the best candidates for the team Interestingly enough, performance on one's first course seems to correspond well to intra-team rankings by the end of the first year, or at least it did last year with a sample size of about 6!

I think this year during tryouts we gave our finalists a map with a route choice leg from an A meet course we'd done in the past for Yellow, Orange and one of the advanced courses, and asked candidates to talk through the route they would choose and how they would execute that route. I don't know how that worked, since the cadet leadership conducts the interviews of the final candidates - Jordan may be able to shed some light on that aspect. We're also toying with doing a spatial orientation drill - you come into a room, flip over a piece of paper with a diagram of the room and have to put an X to mark your own location in the room within 5 seconds.

Jon and I have thought about doing a study - unfortunately, by the time we thought of it, we were in our last year at USMA. Should we return (which will require a small miracle, but they do occasionally occur), I know that we will look at that option again.

Cristina, we also have a bit of a following issue when all 50 are on the same course, although frankly I think that happens on the score-o as well...with the time we have available for practice, we'd have to set 6-8 courses a day to get everyone out on time and minimize following, and that makes it hard to ensure equity of the courses.

this has nothing to do with anything recent, but wouldn't it make sense for there to be more right-handed people than left? :S

there is, the issue mentioned above was a typo and the actual data reflects your statement :D

Sorry for continuing to mix two threads, but back on the West Point problem...

Couldn't you hold a training camp or something over the summer that focuses on technique rather than competition? Then send them off to train on their own and hit a few local meets between the camp and tryouts. That should be enough to get a credible read on their potential.

Eric,
Don't I WISH! New cadets (incoming freshmen) are in training from the end of June until school starts (and tryouts) in mid-august. We get them for 2-3 different days towards the end of July, about 90 mins a shot. The rest of the time they're in cadet basic training...but that's the story of a military academy, a lot of competing priorities. Which takes us back to my original interest in this thread - it would be nice to develop a way to test orienteering aptitude in beginners...or at least be able to make some "good guesses."

So here's the next question - I wonder how the responses everyone submitted relate to our USOF rankings? Are the top orienteers more right-brained than average (and somewhat left-brained) types like me? I'd say the comparison applies for my limited sample size of two (I had to work for years to learn to orienteer decently, Jon picked it up very quickly as a cadet and meets the right-brained, math-oriented profile). It would be interesting to hear how the members of the US Team (or other top orienteers worldwide!) describe themselves.

I sent an email to Dr Hopper, the person who runs the quiz webpage, but she doesn't have any data relating to it; she did, however, make a reference to Ned Herrman's Brain Dominance Inventory, but I can not find appropriate data that I can decipher.