What do misestimations and asymmetries in spatial judgement indicate about spatial representation?

Abstract

When people are asked to judge the distance between 2 points, they may produce systematic over-or underestimations. Their judgments may also show asymmetries, as when, for example, people estimate the distance from their house to a mailbox as different from the distance from the mailbox to their house. It has been argued that such errors show that spatial representations are fundamentally nonmetric. In 3 experiments, however, the authors show that these effects can be explained by a category-adjustment (CA) model of spatial coding, in which coding is hierarchical (i.e., occurs at more than one level of measurement, with estimates based on combination across levels). In this model, coding at each level is uncertain but not distorted. Experiment 1 shows that, in a carefully controlled experimental setting, the CA model can be used to predict under-or overestimations of distances with respect to objective standards. Experiments 2 and 3 show that, when people learn maps, the CA model correctly predicts patterns of asymmetries in estimation.

Functional Equivalence of Spatial Representations Derived From Vision and Language: Evidence From Allocentric Judgments.

“…For example, using the mental scanning paradigm with described targets, Denis and Cocude (1997) were unable to find any spatial biases when scanning toward salient as compared with toward neutral landmarks. Asymmetries in spatial responses directed toward salient and nonsalient locations are a typical finding with real-world environments (McNamara & Diwadkar, 1997;Newcombe, Huttenlocher, Sandberg, Lie, & Johnson, 1999). Moreover, spatial representations derived from language do not seem to be as vivid as ones derived from perception.…”

Prototypes and particulars: Geometric and experience-dependent spatial categories.

“…For instance, people weight prototypical information more heavily when fine-grained information is uncertain, such as when multiple locations must be remembered. Engebretson and Huttenlocher (1996) found larger response biases toward the centers of the left and right regions in the V task when participants were asked to remember two target directions presented sequentially than when a single target had to be remembered (see also Huttenlocher et al, 1991;Newcombe et al, 1999).…”

“…Huttenlocher and colleagues have proposed that similar categorization processes operate when people make a variety of stimulus judgments, including judgments of object size , estimates of location from memory (Engebretson & Huttenlocher, 1996;Huttenlocher et al, 1991;Newcombe et al, 1999), judgments involving event timing and duration (Huttenlocher et al, 1988), and even estimates of grayness . This proposal has been formalized in the CA model, which we introduce in the context of location memory tasks, the focus of the present study.…”

“…This general goal has been pursued across a series of studies by Huttenlocher and her colleagues (e.g., Engebretson & Huttenlocher, 1996;Huttenlocher, Newcombe, & Sandberg, 1994;Newcombe, Huttenlocher, Sandberg, Lie, & Johnson, 1999). These researchers initially applied concepts from the object categorization domain to spatial categorization.…”

The accuracy of spatial information from temporally and spatially organized mental maps

“…Specifically, we looked at performance on distance estimation and direction judgment tasks as a function of the need for fine-and coarse-grained information. This was done from the perspective of Huttenlocher, Hedges, and Duncan's (1991;Newcombe, Huttenlocher, Sandberg, Lie, & Johnson, 1999) category adjustment theory of spatial memory.…”