Bard, Keller, and Leavens put a much-needed spotlight on the demographic makeup of the participant samples in developmental psychology research. These participants are generally Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD), echoing a widespread problem in psychological science (Henrich, Heine, and Norenzayan, Reference Henrich, Heine and Norenzayan2010), and this issue may affect dominant developmental psychology theories. The authors advocate for an approach to developmental psychology that is worldwide, in situ, local, and diverse (WILD) (following the term coined by Newson et al., Reference Newson, Buhrmester, Xygalatas and Whitehouse2021). Here, we want to look at WILD work in the domain of navigation, which illustrates some of the challenges involved with the approach.

Navigation is a fundamental cognitive capacity shared with all mobile species – it is evolutionarily ancient and essential for survival. And yet, spatial cognition is extraordinarily diverse, both across and within cultures (Fernandez Velasco & Spiers, Reference Fernandez Velasco and Spiers2024; Newcombe, Hegarty, & Uttal, Reference Newcombe, Hegarty and Uttal2023; Peer et al., Reference Peer, Brunec, Newcombe and Epstein2021). There have been important advances over the past 50 years in the study of normative developmental trajectories of spatial cognition, including the use of allocentric and egocentric frames of reference, geometric cues for orientation, spatial categories for memory of location, perspective taking, and overall cognitive mapping (Casasola, Reference Casasola2008; Cheng, Reference Cheng2008; Nazareth et al., Reference Nazareth, Weisberg, Margulis and Newcombe2018; Ruggiero, D’Errico, & Iachini, Reference Ruggiero, D’Errico and Iachini2016; Vasilyeva & Lourenco, Reference Vasilyeva and Lourenco2012).

Although there is little work on individual and cultural differences in this domain, with many of these studies reporting on samples from WEIRD populations, there are some notable exceptions. For example, there is research with children of the Mbendjele BaYaka in the Republic of Congo (Jang et al., Reference Jang, Boesch, Mundry, Kandza and Janmaat2019), Tsimane children in Bolivia (Davis & Cashdan, Reference Davis and Cashdan2019), Hadza foragers (Crittenden et al., Reference Crittenden, Farahani, Herlosky, Pollom, Mabulla, Ruginski and Cashdan2021), and Twa children in Namibia (Davis, Stack, & Cashdan, Reference Davis, Stack and Cashdan2021). There is also an examination of intracultural variation in development (Schug et al., Reference Schug, Barhorst-Cates, Stefanucci, Creem-Regehr, Olsen and Cashdan2022). These studies have led to conclusions with potentially wide application. For instance, in the study with seminomadic Twa children, the researchers found that schooling resulted in similar mobility patterns for boys and girls and reduced gender differences in spatial cognition performance (Davis, Stack, & Cashdan, Reference Davis, Stack and Cashdan2021). This result points to the way in which cultural factors transform individual differences within a population. In their traditional lifestyle, Twa men’s range is larger than women’s, which results in superior performance in some spatial tasks (Vashro & Cashdan, Reference Vashro and Cashdan2015), but this gender difference disappears when mobility patterns even out as a result of cultural changes.

This effect highlights the importance of the environment in developmental trajectories (Newcombe, Reference Newcombe2024). The range that children get to roam independently seems to be a crucial factor in navigation ability later on. A study of children’s mobility patterns in Kenya (Munroe & Munroe, Reference Munroe and Munroe1971), together with an observational study in New England (Hart, Reference Hart1979), lent early support to this idea, with further support coming from a comparative study of children growing up in the United States and the Faroe Islands (Schug et al., Reference Schug, Barhorst-Cates, Stefanucci, Creem-Regehr, Olsen and Cashdan2022). Environmental effects go beyond mobility patterns, though. A large-scale international study found that people growing up rurally were better navigators and that people were better at navigating in environments that were topologically similar – quantified by the entropy of the street network – to where they grew up (Coutrot et al., Reference Coutrot, Manley, Goodroe, Gahnstrom, Filomena, Yesiltepe and Spiers2022).

The importance of the environment in developmental trajectories is in tune with the WILD approach advocated by Bard and colleagues. Specifically, it highlights the importance of in situ, local studies. But it also highlights the challenges involved. Operationalizing the environmental impact on development is complicated because it spans mobility patterns, navigation strategies, and environmental metrics, which are heterogeneous and wide-ranging (e.g., visibility, entropy). Moreover, people develop navigational strategies that are local cultural adaptations to the environment (Fernandez Velasco & Gleizer, Reference Fernandez Velasco and Gleizer2023; Fernandez Velasco et al., Reference Fernandez Velasco, Griesbauer, Brunec, Morley, Manley, McNamee and Spiers2025). Thus, what constitutes expert navigation in one culture might not translate to high navigational performance in a unified worldwide test (Spiers, Coutrot, & Hornberger, Reference Spiers, Coutrot and Hornberger2023).

Another important element in the cross-cultural study of navigation is language. The preferential use of different types of spatial frames of reference varies cross-culturally, e.g., variation in the preference for absolute (e.g., the hotel is northeast of the bakery…) versus relative (e.g., the hotel is to the right of the bakery) spatial frames of reference, and this preference holds across language, gesture, and spatial tasks (Levinson, Reference Levinson2003). The language spoken in a culture may play a key role in the structuring of spatial thinking (Majid et al., Reference Majid, Bowerman, Kita, Haun and Levinson2004), although debate continues Gleitman & Papafragou, Reference Gleitman, Papafragou, Holyoak and Morrison2016).

Overall, different cultures of navigation evolve to adapt to different environments. Accordingly, particular developmental trajectories of spatial cognition are likely to be molded by a complex interplay of linguistic factors, cultural practices, and environmental features (Palmer et al., Reference Palmer, Lum, Schlossberg and Gaby2017). Nevertheless, given the strong natural selection for effective navigation, we may also find a common core that transcends such variation. The WILD approach should be a search for the universal and the specific, in tandem.