Picking up on a comment by Mrs H
i've even heard talk of maps becoming 3-D mental pictures ... this is a language we're too old to learn
I have been thinking about some of the discussion in this section about how people orienteer and the techniques they (should) use. It seems to me that we always have "mental maps" of the terrain - our own internal "picture" of where we are, where things are and how to get where we want to go. For some people it may be a visual or even 3d "image" but at other times or for other people it may be a matter of distances and bearings (that's over there, I'm about half way to that) or a checklist of things you are expecting to see.
The key to success must be something to do with your ability to quickly and accurately build a "mental map" using all the information available (map, compass, your eyes and ears), to match your mental map to the landscape and to quickly and accurately adapt your mental map when the landscape does not "fit" your prediction.
There is a lot of discussion in education at the moment about "learning" or "thinking" styles. People have favourite ways of processing information - which means they tend to "translate" all forms of information into their preferred forms. People can be mainly "visual", "verbal" or "kinaesthetic" (i.e. they think in terms of movement, touch and feel) thinkers. Visual people read books and create mental images from them, verbal thinkers look at maps and translate them into lists of words (e.g. "the stream is behind the hill") Kinaesthetic thinkers want to "play" - they speak with their hands, they want to pick things up. Most people are a mixture, with one or two approaches much stronger than the other(s).
If there is some truth in this then it might make sense of why some techniques and coaching approaches work well or less well for some people. I am strongly kinaesthetic - when things go well I get a "feel" for a landscape. I am mentally reaching ahead, "touching" the things I am passing, "bouncing off" catching features towards the control point. I am constantly thinking about what is next to what, what is behind what and so on. It's not about mentally seeing, it is about mentally touching. Others are different - I know a very good orienteer who "talks" herself around a course ("go along the stream until 50 metres past the path on the right then skirt around the marsh") and literally chants this sort of thing beneath her breath all the way around.
I do not think you are ever "too old" - if you do not "see" a map as a model in your head, you may not be a naturally visual thinker - you may need to use the map to create a verbal description of the terrain or to get a "feel" for it instead.
What do people think and how might this affect coaching?