I'm excellent at spacial reasoning when it comes to things like Geometry, but mediocre when it comes to directions. I don't drive, and never really developed the ability to always know where I am or where I'm going.

In reality, Melissa only started this thread to give me a hard time over my performance as a navigator....lol. I normally have really good navigational skills but I kept screwing up with my navigational aid. In my DEFENSE.... the streets of this particular North Carolina city in the mountains are not laid out in a very good grid pattern and it was very pretty and new to me so I was a bit distracted. It didnt help either that I didnt take my ADHD meds and I was VERY distracted by just being in the car with Melissa! 

It was a beautiful trip and we even got caught in a freak snow storm that had snowflakes the size of quarters. The 5 day visit with Melissa and her wife and kids was incredible and went way to fast. I think we all look forward to getting together again, as sson as possible. Melissa's wife (MelsSupport , here on the forum) is a great person and I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know her and spending time with her.

I think I will continue this story on it's own thread... with Melissa's help and approval! lol

Just Hijacking the thread for a moment.

As a child we had dinner every evening at the table as a family. Sometimes conversation would come to how to get somewhere, such as going somewhere the next day. My Mum always pointed in the same direction. I asked her once why do you always point in that direction. Because that's where the garden gate is and you have to go through it to get anywhere.

I then knew I was doomed

Cindy

Once I know a place, I can usually get around quite easily, but my spacial sense is not very good.

When I was little I went to the cub scouts for a short time. They taught us a number of tips for navigating. I could never get my head around the stars. Polaris seems to be almost overhead here. But one which is useful, at these latitiudes, is the sun. It rises in the south east and sets in the south west. So, as long as I know if it is AM or PM, I can work out, generally, which direction I'm headed. When I lived in the highlands of Scotland, that was incredably useful.

Another, which needs a little preparation, is to magnitise a tacking pin, the kind that is used in sewing. You keep it in the lapel of a jacket or somewhere where it won't cause problems. I have a couple in my car. In a pinch, it can be gently droped onto the surface of a cup of water and will point north.

Something more recent are sattalite dishes. These generally point almost south.

Quote from: Yakshini on March 14, 2011, 09:10:52 PM
I'm excellent at spacial reasoning when it comes to things like Geometry, but mediocre when it comes to directions. I don't drive, and never really developed the ability to always know where I am or where I'm going.

If I've driven somewhere, I can usually find it again, even years later.  If I just ride, then often I have no idea how to get there.

And like Stacy, even with a very good sense of direction, if I am meeting new people I will be concentrating so much on them that I won't have the foggiest idea how to get around the area.

- Kate

Quote from: spacial on March 15, 2011, 08:09:59 AM
my spacial sense is not very good

For some reason I found this to be really funny

Well, two weeks into HRT and I can still find the drawer with the AAs and the mones. 
But of course, I have always had a good sense of direction 

Quote from: Lee on March 15, 2011, 09:02:23 AM
For some reason I found this to be really funny

Now that you come to mention it.....

I dunno, I'm a pretty good mathematical / logical thinker - I have great coordination - but my navigational skills are terrible. Screw GPS, sometimes even that doesn't work on me. I remember having to seriously pay close attention on those things. I'm not sure if it's a feminine thing or not. I'm sure I just inherited this from my mother.

cyclops?

Sense of navigation, for me, is questionable. I sometimes have a gut sense of where something might be, but unless I have a map I'm useless. With a map, it will take me a while to orient myself and then I'm pretty good - better than my mom at least. No changes with that.

In terms of spatial reasoning, I've always been fairly capable, but recently I took a test where I had to rotate shapes mentally and I aced it, rapidly. It did make me wonder if testosterone was giving me a boost, but it might have also had to do with better focus as I got less depressed.

I've seen several mentions of testosterone being related to cognition, a quick google gave me this article: http://www.disease-treatment.com/showthread.php?t=61658 Some places have suggested it's during early development that testosterone has the most influence on spatial reasoning, some say it might actively play a role.

I have always had the ability to navigate to places in my head and I'm pretty good at math skills, I use trig on a daily basis as an accident investigator. Having said that, I find myself acting lost and misdirecting as to not raise suspicion, still not 100% fulltime, just at work LOL

Quote from: K8 on March 14, 2011, 06:40:33 PMI think it is basic brain mapping - innate ability - combined with practice and need.  I really doubt it is on the X chromosome or is an effect of testosterone.

I totally agree with Kate. I think it is an acquired skill that is refined and retained through practice and use. I have always had an extraordinary sense of direction and orientation but I spent a LOT of my childhood in the woods and wilderness and I suspect that has more to do with my navigational ability than anything else. I have rarely run into anyone with better homing ability but mine is "environmentally sensitive". I am fine in the wilderness but put me in a mall and I am TOTALLY disoriented! LOL!

Navigational ability seems to be the one typically "male trait" that I have in abundance.  I was a barely passing student in math and terrible at anything involving physical coordination or spatial skills like games and sports, but for some reason I have a stellar sense of geography and direction.  The only time I'm lost is when someone else is driving and I'm not looking up.  As a child I used to stare at world maps and regional maps for fun (even star charts sometimes) and when I discovered Google Earth I was in heaven.

I've found that if I try to memorize something as if it's an actual place, it helps a lot.  Like in my Chemistry class, I'll imagine the molecules as rooms of a house or roads in a city, and I won't forget.  Go figure. 

So what if it that's considered a male trait?  If it did come from natal testosterone, it's bittersweet compensation for the other effects.

Oh, and no, nearly 3 years of HRT hasn't diminished it.  If anything, I'm able to memorize places in greater detail than before.  Rather than hormones, maybe it's just feeling right in general allows me to more clearly focus.

I often wonder if this whole sense of direction thing between male & female is 1 of the greatest myths mostly promoted by men.
I always had and still have a very good sense of direction and navigation and I can certainly read a map once I know where I am on the map, then work it out and take it from there.
My Husband will never let me near a map, he seems to think women and maps don't mix, he'll put it in a nice way like ''sit back and relax pauline dear, I'II do the map reading and navigion, after all we don't want to get lost''  so I sit back and relax and if we make a wrong turn which we have, well he certainly can't blame me, blame a bad map lol
1 thing certainly annoyed me resently, my Husband, my brother and I where going to a funeral long distance a week ago, Husband was driving, we picked up my brother on the way, his Wife couldnd go, we where not sure of the route, anyway my brother says to me, ''you sit in the back seat pauline, powder your nose and admire the view, I'II read the map'' I sat in the back, I was so annoyed, Mark didn't want to make a fuss and nether did I, but I would consider myself a better navigator than my brother, Mark was a little enbarrassed by my brother's behavour, anyway I sat back, didn't let it spoil the journey, let the guys at it, they know best, so they think, I know Im a better navigator than most men, but its never tested because Im a woman, in my opinion, male sense of direction is a myth.
Pauline

i get the whole navigation bit. its gotten to the point that i can give 20 diferent directions to the same spot and every single one is diffrent. my gf hates it. she finaly told me to just choose one and stick to it. I get really agravated tho when i tell some one to go right and they go left just to find out that im right. it just drives me nuts. i live out in cali and my mom was takin me my bros and my gf to six flags one summer and we got to a freeway split and she couldnt make heads or tails of the directions she printed off. i glanced at the little map that comes with it, figured our location in a split second and told her where to go. 30 min later because she wouldnt hear me out. we ended up in a secetchy type of area and she was freaking out. she just wouldnt take my knowledge. my gf has pretty much agreed that when it comes to getting us around we dont need a gps she just needs to make sure im in the passenger seat.

My spatial sense is completely lacking - give me a picture of an object and ask me how it looks from another angle, and I can usually give a pretty good response after 15 minutes with pen and paper. Whenever I'm inside buildings, I lose my sense of direction completely, and have to rely on the "gotta be an exit here somewhere" method unless there are signs. There's one particular store I visit quite often, and I swear, that thing changes floors every time! If I go to the 3rd floor, I always have to take the stairs down to 2nd to find it, but if I go to the 2nd, I have to go to 3rd.

Despite this, however, I have truly excellent navigation skills outdoors - of the "Hey, I remember that tree!" variety. I can always tell you exactly how to get back to where we started out, although it will usually involve retracing the route we took to get here, and I never get lost unless I go indoors or sit in a car or something. Well, never - almost never. Of course, take me inside a mall, and I will have no idea whatsoever where we are until you take me back to the same door we entered through. I can also usually point in the general direction of most places of significance to me.

My entire internal navigation system is based on recognizing landmarks, though - if I'm in a town with no mountains on the horizon, I lose the ability to point out the direction of important places completely, and instead have to rely on recognizing landmarks on the individual streets.

From what I've read, this is the usually-female method of navigating - men know where they are, women know how we got there. (And, obviously, the male method is considered "inherently superior" because, hey! it's the one the men use!)

Hm. What am I then? I've never been lost (and I've been in a whole lot of strange places), and yet I never know where I am or how I got there.

(It's odd. I don't have a sense of cardinal direction per se. I define "north" as the direction I'm facing where the Pacific Ocean is on my left, or alternatively on the East Coast where the Atlantic or Gulf coast is on my right. But I don't actually have to be able to see the coast, I just know where it is. I can navigate everything from cities to back country wilderness using the ocean as my reference line. Although I'm completely hopeless in the triangular region between North Dakota, Ohio, and Arkansas, and I'm a little odd in Florida because "north" changes direction about midway through the state.)

Actually I have found that if you have plenty of time getting lost can be a really fun way to find your way around somewhere new.  Just follow a road to see where it goes.
It also means you get to talk to lots of people when you ask for directions.
Karen.

Quote from: melissa42013 on March 13, 2011, 09:44:51 PM
So I was discussing with a TG friend today how we both can navigate by a innate sense of direction while our wives are lost without GPS. I know this is a common male trait.

I am interested in hearing from other girls if they lost this ability with HRT and from the guys if they gained it on T.

I was also wondering about spacial reasoning. I have the ability to manipulate, zoom, and deconstruct just about anything I see at any time in my brain. I know other guys that can do the same. Did anyone loose or gain this train in the process of HRT?

I will take whatever HRT has to offer me but am curious.

-M

Well I cant drive any more. I cant Park.... and I have no clue where I am either....