Human Navigation Attempts to Replicate Baker’s Displacement Experiment

Abstract

Baker (1980, 1981) reported a seemingly robust ability of blindfolded human subjects to indicate the direction toward home (the starting point of the journey) by written and verbal estimates or by pointing. The orientation of the subjects was sufficiently good that statistically significant results were obtained with sample sizes of 10–20 individuals. Furthermore, the ability to indicate correctly the homeward direction seemed sometimes to deteriorate when the subjects wore magnets or Helmholtz coils (but see Dayton’s commentary, this volume). With the apparent exception of one collaborative test at Cornell (see Adler and Pelkie, this volume), several attempts to repeat Baker’s straightforward experiment failed to yield comparable results (Gould and Able, 1981; Dayton, this volume).