{"id":9133,"date":"2006-02-13T10:35:38","date_gmt":"2006-02-13T17:35:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/2006\/02\/13\/the-road-less-travelled.html"},"modified":"2006-02-13T10:35:38","modified_gmt":"2006-02-13T17:35:38","slug":"the_road_less_t","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/02\/13\/the_road_less_t.html","title":{"rendered":"The road less travelled …"},"content":{"rendered":"

… probably seems shorter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The more times we have walked a route, the longer we judge it to be, a UK researcher has confirmed. His studies could help explain why daily commutes can grow to seem interminably long.<\/p>\n

Neuroscientists have long known that our brains are poor at estimating a set distance such as a kilometre. But most studies of this phenomenon have been carried out in simple artificial environments where, for example, people walk along paths taped out in a gymnasium.<\/p>\n

Andrew Crompton at Manchester University, UK, wanted to see how good we are at judging distances in the real world.<\/p>\n

He asked 140 architecture students in their first, second and third years of study to estimate the distance from the university’s student-union building to familiar destinations along a straight road, so the length of journeys that they would have strolled (or staggered) many times.<\/p>\n

The more times students had walked the route, the further they estimated the journey to be. First year students, for example, estimated a mile-long path to be around 1.24 miles on average, while third year students stretched it to 1.45 miles. Crompton publishes his results in Environment and Behavior1.<\/p>\n

The results match those from other studies in which, for example, people moving through a virtual world tend to overestimate how far they have travelled. “It seems to fit in with an emerging theme,” says Laurence Harris who has carried out such experiments at York University in Toronto.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hmmm. Does my daily commute seem longer than it is because I’m so familiar with it? Actually, I’ve a sense that it feels shorter (since I can sort of zone out during it). Interesting, nonetheless.<\/p>\n

(via GeekPress<\/a>)<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

… probably seems shorter. The more times we have walked a route, the longer we judge it to be, a UK researcher has confirmed. His studies could help explain why…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science","category-travel"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4054,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/02\/22\/uk03_driving.html","url_meta":{"origin":9133,"position":0},"title":"UK03 – Driving","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 22-Feb-03 3:35pm","format":false,"excerpt":"It occured to me this morning that I hadn't talked much about driving while in the UK. 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