| Abstract: | One of the most pervasive beliefs about human way finding is that some people have a natural ability that distinguishes them from others. In this research, we asked children and adults to rate their own sense of direction, a promising index of orientation skills despite its simplicity and reliance on self‐assessment. Ratings were obtained before and after reversal of a newly learned outdoor route. Self‐ratings by children and adults before route reversal only weakly predicted two of a variety of measures of route and bearing knowledge. However, adults' ratings after the route reversal reflected performance on almost all of these same measures. In addition, route reversal performance was easily improved by instructing children and adults during route acquisition to look back in anticipation of the return. The pattern of results suggests that way finders' beliefs about their sense of direction are based on a recollection of the outcomes of the attentive and mnemonic strategies they use. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. |
