Will You Walk In Circles If You Get Lost? The Answer Is ...

Thursday, August 20, 2009 - 12:42 in Psychology & Sociology

Science fact or urban legend?   If you get lost, you will walk in circles, just like you have seen in too many movies and TV shows to count. Fact, say researchers from the Multisensory Perception and Action Group at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen writing in Current Biology, though there was no scientific evidence to back that up until now. And those circular paths are rarely systematic, the researchers say. The same person may sometimes veer to the left, then again to the right, before ending up back where they started from, which rules out one potential explanation for the phenomenon, namely that circle-walking stems from some systematic bias to turn in one direction, such as differences in leg length or strength. read more

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