Laura Carlson

Laura Carlson is a Professor of Psychology and Associate Dean for Professional Development at Notre Dame.  In addition to her research on spatial language and spatial cognition, Laura is an active member of the MRA.  She gave us some insight on the importance of running groups, cross training, and finding your way around. 

When did you get started running?

I ran cross country in high school and a few road races in college, and then on and off for the next twenty years, and then seriously started running again in 2010 with the goal of training to run Boston. 

What draws you to running?

Every other sport I’ve done has not really been suited for me.  I played basketball all throughout high school, competed in the high jump where I jumped my height, rowed crew at Dartmouth, and used to play wallyball (volleyball played on a racquetball court).  But running was the only sport that’s really ever suited my body type since I’m pretty short.  

Have you kept running up until now?

I took off running for about twenty years, when I was going for my graduate and professional degrees.   I had sort of stopped in order to prioritize my family time and career, but now that they are a bit older I have a lot more time.  So about two years ago, I finally bought myself a treadmill, which let me run in the winter here.  The funny thing about that is right after I bought the treadmill, I hooked up with a running group, so now I always run outside in the winter.  

How has the MRA helped get you back into running?

MRA is responsible for me hooking up with a running group which has made all the difference in the world to my training.  We get up early in the morning, in the dark, and run together.

That’s what I think is so important about the MRA.  Before I was a member, I had no idea how to hook up with a running group.  Runners are typically friendly but it’s still kind of hard to get into a group.  So from 1994 until 2010 I sort of ran on my own, but now I’ve been training with a group and that has made it all the more fun.

What is your research on?

My research is on spatial cognition, which basically refers to how you represent the objects and places in the world around you.  One example is looking at how people give directions from one place to another.  If someone comes up to you and says “tell me how to get to the bookstore”, I am interested in figuring out how they decided which landmarks or spatial terms to use.   There are a lot of assumptions that get made about the person’s familiarity with the environment, and those will change what you say.  

For example, if I ask my Mom to give me directions, she’ll say “well, you go to the intersection, and then there’s the floral shop where your sister got her wedding bouquet…”, but if I asked my Dad he’d say “go to this street, turn west, drive two miles…”.  So I am interested in why people have these different preferences.  It could be cultural. 

 I grew up in Boston, and there we used left and right a lot in terms of helping navigate, because the streets aren’t laid out very grid like.  But when I came to the Midwest, I found that people much prefer the north, south, east, west directions.  When I called for pizza in grad school, people would say, “well are you north or south of this road?” and I often had to use a compass rose to help me figure out the answer!

The funniest story I have about this is from my son, who is raised here.  One early morning we were coming off of an exit on the highway, and the directions said we had to go to the east, and I had no idea whether we had to go left or right.  And as we were stopped, he says “Mom, just look at the sun, the sun rises in the east”.  It was natural for him to think about directions in cardinal direction terms, where for me, I still need to calculate it. 

My other research examines how people navigate in buildings, particularly if they are unfamiliar.  Think about when you go to a doctor’s office that you’ve never been to.  You get in the front door and look at the directory, and somehow how you get to the office by looking at the room numbers or following directions.  But after your appointment, how do you find your way back?  It is unlikely that you were learning the route explicitly as a sequence of turns on the way there, but somehow you’re able to find your way back.  What you may do is look for something familiar to help you find your way back.  But it’s not clear what landmarks you will remember.  Some objects or features of the environment are being encoded on your way but not all, and we ask the question of WHAT things are getting in, and how do you use them when you are headed back after the appointment.

How do you study this at Notre Dame?

We have a lab with a virtually reality program that allow us to create buildings that people can virtually navigate.  We can build paths and move walls and staircases and put in or take out landmarks. We then have people navigate through the building and then test their memory of that route.   Women stereotypically tend to like landmarks more than men do, so we can look to see if that holds up in a population of college students.  

What makes this research fun for me is that I’m not very good spatially.  The joke in psychology is that you study what you’re not good at.  I’m the last person you’d want to follow out of a burning building.  

Has your own research helped you in your own direction skills?

I’ve learned one strategy from going to so many conferences in different cities.  I’ve discovered that if I get to an intersection where I’m going to turn, I turn around and look at what it would look like at the vantage point from where I’m coming out.  If I have the wrong perspective of the building, I’ll never get back.

Have you adapted your research to your running?

I would love to try to study the two together, because then you could try to link them.  Some sports are good for this.  I play golf too, and that is a great spatial cognition task, because if you hit your ball into the woods, you have to find a good landmark that tells you where it went in. But your vantage point from the tee box and from in front of the woods is so different.  So being able to locate that ball and figure out the right clues here to help you locate it over there can be a challenge.

In terms of running, you have to ask these same kinds of questions to keep from getting lost.  I’m one of those people who ends up doing the same route over and over again, because then I don’t have to worry about getting lost and can just focus on the workout. We’ve been running in Knollwood a lot in the early mornings when it is dark, so it is hard to learn the different paths. I definitely rely on my running buddies to plot our routes. And it is funny how the same route seems so different when you run it in daylight. 

Have you been training?

Ryan Fenstermaker coaches me, and he pushes me which is exactly what I want.  My goal is to go sub 3:30.  I felt like at Chicago I hit a plateau, so this next goal is ambitious but doable.  The other thing I’ve been doing is working with Angie at Triumph Fitness, 2 or 3 times a week doing core and ab work.  That’s made a huge difference.  I feel like I’m a much stronger runner from this combination.

Is anyone coming with you?

There’s a 5K right before that my husband will be running with me.   He has really embraced his role as spectator and always takes fabulous photos of the runners, the start and the crowds. He surprised me too, and has trained for the 5K which we will do together the day before, nice and easy.

The marathon is run on patriot’s day which is a holiday, so my parents, my sister and my niece and nephew will be out there too.

What advice do you have for any new runner?

Have fun.  If you want to compete, remember you are really just competing against yourself.  I’m very competitive, but very competitive against myself.  It doesn’t matter what anyone else around me is doing, I try to support their efforts and be critical of only my own performance. What’s most important is seeing that you are making the progress you want to make.  And sometimes just going for a nice run with friends is the best workout ever.

Also, you can get into running at anytime.  Right now running is a really important part of my life, but it was not for more twenty years.  It’s never too late to lace up the shoes and just go for a run. 

Although the Boston marathon was brutal this year, reaching temperatures in the 80s, Laura finished strong.  Here’s what she had to say about Monday’s race:

I am happy to say I survived the heat in Boston 2012! And I had such a wonderful time. I was on pace pretty much the first half but it was SO hot that I knew I couldn't sustain it. So, instead of getting really bummed out, I decided to turn off my watch and simply enjoy the rest of the run, high-fiving the crowd, smiling, and dumping cups of water on my head. I didn't even know my finishing time – I had to ask my husband for it from the text alerts. But it was hands-down the most fun I've had in a marathon.  BIG shout-out to all of people along the race course who provided all of the hoses, ice, sponges, popsicles and encouragement. It really felt like we were all in it together.  I'm already qualified for Boston for next year, and will definitely be going back - hopefully with cooler weather so I can really race it!