Navigation ability varies widely across humans. Prior studies have reported that being younger and a male has an advantage for navigation ability. However, these studies have generally involved small numbers of participants from a handful of western countries. Here, we review findings from our project Sea Hero Quest, which used a video game for mobile and tablet devices to test 3.9 million people on their navigation ability, sampling across every nation-state and from 18 to 99 years of age. Results revealed that the task has good ecological validity and across all countries sufficiently sampled (N = 63), age is linked to a near-linear decline in navigation ability from the early 20s. All countries showed a male advantage, but this varied considerably and could be partly predicted by gender inequality. We found that those who reported growing up in a city were on average worse at navigating than those who grew up outside cities and that navigation performance helped identify those at greater genetic risk of Alzheimer's disease. We discuss the advantages and challenges of using a mobile app to study cognition and the future avenues for understanding individual differences in navigation ability arising from this research.

中文翻译：

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从数百万人的角度解释世界范围内的导航能力差异：公民科学项目 Sea Hero Quest

导航能力因人而异。先前的研究报告说，年轻和男性在导航能力方面具有优势。然而，这些研究通常涉及来自少数西方国家的少数参与者。在这里，我们回顾了我们的项目 Sea Hero Quest 的结果，该项目使用手机和平板设备的视频游戏测试了 390 万人的导航能力，从每个民族国家抽样，年龄从 18 岁到 99 岁不等。结果表明，该任务具有良好的生态有效性，并且在所有国家/地区都进行了充分采样（N= 63），年龄与 20 岁出头的导航能力呈近线性下降有关。所有国家都显示出男性优势，但这种差异很大，可以部分地由性别不平等来预测。我们发现那些报告在城市长大的人在导航方面的平均水平比在城市外长大的人差，并且导航性能有助于识别那些具有更高遗传风险的阿尔茨海默氏病。我们讨论了使用移动应用程序研究认知的优势和挑战，以及理解这项研究产生的导航能力个体差异的未来途径。