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DON’T feel stupid if you’re prone to turning door knobs in the wrong
direction. People are terrible at remembering the direction of rotating objects,
psychologists have found—and they say the inability may have evolutionary
roots.

David Gilden and Christy Price from the University of Texas at Austin made
the discovery when they asked 48 volunteers to watch computer-animated objects.
The objects either travelled across the screen, rotated clockwise or
counterclockwise, or appeared to loom closer or move farther away.

The volunteers remembered the direction of motion of an object only if it was
moving towards or away from them, or across the screen. “People couldn’t
remember a thing about rotation,” says Gilden. He thinks the difference is a
consequence of our evolution. Knowing whether an animal you were hunting was
approaching or retreating was important, while remembering rotations was
not.

This may explain why we have poor intuitive understanding of the effects of
rotation, says Gilden. “When you look at a top spinning, you are filled with a
sense of wonder.” He also speculates that it may explain why people don’t
intuitively know which way to steer when a car goes into a spin.

Jim Stone, a psychologist at the University of Sheffield, says the results
are intriguing, although he has another explanation. “As we grow up, it is very
rare that we come across things that rotate,” he says.

Maybe we don’t remember rotation because we haven’t had enough practice,
Stone adds. To help back the idea that there may be an evolutionary cause, he
says, the Texas team should show that we cannot learn about rotations, even in
situations where it is important to us.