[Tor3]

>That pretty clearly forces every Guugu Yimithirr speaker to have to be constantly aware of the compass directions so they can clearly point at things, it's quite unsurprising that they are very good in instinctively knowing where the north is without a compass.

Apparently you can't even greet someone unless you know the cardinal directions - an article I read in New Scientist claimed that a greeting is essentially telling which direction you came from and in which you are headed.

Be that as it may, I can easily believe that this feature of the language forces you to keep track of directions, after something I experienced: I was always good at keeping track of directions myself, I could walk around in sunless cities for hours and always know which direction I should go to get back to where I started. I could do this while driving too (I also traveled to other countries and drove around in many unfamiliar cities).

But then GPS navigation systems arrived. Convenient, I thought. Until I realized I had completely stopped tracking cardinal directions unconsciously. I haven't used car navigation since that hit me, and it was actually hard to get back into the habit of keeping track of where I am. I'm not sure I will ever again be as good as I used to be.

[ted_bunny]

I saw a product that claims to train this skill. An anklet that vibrates periodically in the direction of north. No idea if it works.

[Tor3]

The problem is that it doesn't really train it - in a way it's the opposite. I've heard about someone using a belt which vibrated like that. After using it for a while they felt completely lost without it and lost all feeling of direction. You actually need to let your brain do this for you, external input stops that. Though of course it would be nice with something like that, in general, if you could actually rely 100% on it.. which you can't, with GPS (in cities the direction may suddenly switch, for example, due to buildings playing havoc with the signal)