ABSTRACT
People can be divided into groups on many dimensions. There are left-handers and right-handers, Democrats and Republicans, and those who shower in the morning and those who shower at night. Within the cognitive domain most people would agree that there are also those who get lost in the world and those who don’t, those who can read a map from any perspective and those who must turn it upside down if they are going south, and those who can find their cars in mall parking lots and those who have, at least on occasion, reported their car stolen to mall police. The common denominator in this latter group of behaviors is the ability or inability to remain oriented in space, a capacity that relies heavily on spatial memories, symbolic representations, and the ability to integrate and manipulate both of these to solve the types of navigational problems with which people are faced on a daily basis.
