(本文選自《經濟學人》20200208期)
背景介紹：
在生活中，我們身邊不乏一些總是找不到路的人，他們往往被我們稱為路痴。過去，我們常常認為方向感差更多的是由於先天性因素所導致的。但一項最新的研究發現，後天因素或許也很重要，在城市中長大的人往往更容易變成路痴。
Growing up in a city weakens the brain’s navigational skills
在城市中長大會削弱大腦的尋路能力
Country folk can find their way more easily
農村人更容易找到路
Rural folk can blame Aesop—of the moralising fables—for centuries of stories that mock them as bumpkins. The ancient Greek storyteller’s tale of the Country Mouse and the Town Mouse was only the first to emphasise their supposed simpler tastes and habits when compared with more sophisticated urbanites.
農村人對伊索（的道德說教寓言）或許是心懷怨恨的，因為在流傳了幾個世紀的寓言故事裡，他們總是被當做鄉巴佬而受到嘲笑。這位古希臘故事家創作的寓言故事《鄉下老鼠和城裡老鼠》最早著重描繪了農村人（相比精緻的城裡人而言）的純樸品味和習性。
So listen for the cheers from Somerset to Kansas as neuroscientists announce that, in fact, it is city living that can dull the wits—at least when it comes to finding one’s way in the world.
所以，當神經科學家們宣佈，城市生活實際可能會讓頭腦變得遲鈍（至少就尋路而言）時，請聽聽從薩默塞特到堪薩斯州傳來的歡呼聲吧。
Growing up in a city, a vast global survey has found, has a lifelong negative impact on a person’s ability to navigate. When looking for a half-remembered restaurant in a poorly-lit side street, it seems Country Mouse would be a more useful companion.
一項大規模的全球調查發現，在城市中長大會對一個人的尋路能力產生終身的負面影響。當你在一條光線昏暗的小巷中尋找一家記憶模糊的餐廳時，“鄉下老鼠”或許能更輕易地找到。
In the new study, posted to the online repository bioRxiv, scientists led by Antoine Coutrot at Nantes University in France and Hugo Spiers at University College London describe how they used a dataset gathered from 4m players of a computer game called “Sea Hero Quest”, which tests way-finding skills by asking players to memorise a map showing the location of checkpoints and then measuring how well players can steer a boat to find them, guided only by their mental map.
在這項發表於 bioRxiv 在線資源庫的最新研究中，以法國南特大學的安託萬·庫特羅和倫敦大學學院的雨果·施皮爾為代表的科學家們描述了他們是如何利用從電腦遊戲“航海英雄”的400萬名玩家那裡收集到的數據集展開研究的，該遊戲通過要求玩家記住一張顯示出檢查站位置的地圖，然後讓玩家憑藉著心中的地圖駕駛一艘船去找到這些檢查點，從而測試玩家的尋路能力。
The game was released in 2016 and all players have since been asked for basic information about themselves, including their age, gender, home country, and whether or not they grew up in a city.
這款遊戲發佈於2016年，它要求所有玩家提供自己的基本信息，其中包括年齡、性別、國籍以及是否在城市中長大。
From that database, Dr Spiers and his colleagues examined a subset of 442,000 players from 38 countries: those who had answered all the questions and who had played the game until they reached the later levels. He found that the strongest indicator of a high score was a player’s age—older people performed relatively poorly, which chimes with what researchers know about age-related cognitive decline.
施皮爾和他的同事對來自該數據庫的38個國家的44.2萬名玩家進行了研究，這些玩家回答了所有的問題，並且一直玩到了遊戲後面的關卡。他發現，對獲得高分影響最大的因素是玩家的年齡，年紀大的人表現相對較差，這與研究人員所知的認知能力的下降與年齡有關是一致的。
But the benefit of rural living was strong enough to offset some of that. Data from American players showed that a 70-year-old who grew up in the countryside had the navigational abilities of an average 60-year-old across the dataset.
但農村生活的好處是能夠抵消一部分影響。來自美國玩家的數據顯示，在農村長大的70歲老人與60歲普通老人的尋路能力相當。
The gap between the navigation skills of rural and city people was largest in America (about six times wider than for Romania), and the researchers think they know why. They gave each country a complexity score by analysing how the streets were laid out in its largest cities.
美國的農村人和城裡人的尋路能力的差距是最大的（是羅馬尼亞的近7倍），研究人員認為他們知曉其中的緣由。他們通過分析各大城市的街道佈局，對每個國家的城市複雜度進行評分。
And they found that countries dominated by simple layouts of grid-based cities (most common in America and Argentina) dragged down navigation skills more than growing up in a city based around more complicated networks of streets, such as Prague.
他們發現，相比布拉格這樣街道網絡複雜的城市，在以簡單網格佈局的城市（在美國和阿根廷最為常見）為主的國家長大的人的尋路能力更差。
The study does not show why cities have this impact on people growing up in them. It cannot rule out that an external factor, such as the effect of air pollution on a developing brain, might play a role. But Dr Spiers says that the brain’s navigational abilities probably weaken in the less challenging city environment because they are not being used as much.
這項研究並未說明為什麼在城市中長大會對人產生這種影響。這並不能排除外部因素可能起到的作用，比如空氣汙染對大腦發育的影響。但施皮爾說，在不太具有挑戰性的城市環境中，大腦的尋路能力可能會由於沒有得到充分的利用而被削弱。
Although cities may appear more elaborate, they also feature more clues to help residents find their way, such as numbered streets. As many city-dwellers on a visit to the countryside can attest, one field tends to look much the same as another, so there are fewer external landmarks to help guide the way.
雖然城市可能看起來更為複雜，但城市中提供了更多能夠幫助居民尋路的線索，比如編了號的街道。正如許多前往鄉村遊玩的城市居民所證明的那樣，一個地方和另一個地方看起來沒兩樣，而幫助他們指引方向的路標也更少。
重難點詞彙：
bumpkin [ˈbʌmpkɪn] n. 土包子，鄉巴佬
sophisticated [səˈfɪstɪkeɪtɪd] adj. 複雜的；精緻的；久經世故的
repository [rɪˈpɑːzətɔːri] n. 倉庫；知識庫；資源庫
dominate [ˈdɑːmɪneɪt] v. 控制；支配；佔優勢
elaborate [ɪ'læbəret] adj. 煞費苦心的；詳盡的 vt. 精心製作
本文轉自：每日雙語經濟學人
立足亞洲 面向世界”
傳遞論壇最新動態 促進亞洲深度合作
全球重要對話的傳達者 亞洲共同發展的瞭望者
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