Global-Scale Location and Distance Estimates: Common Representations and Strategies in Absolute and Relative Judgments

Autor/inn/en	Friedman, Alinda; Montello, Daniel R.
Titel	Global-Scale Location and Distance Estimates: Common Representations and Strategies in Absolute and Relative Judgments
Quelle	In: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 32 (2006) 2, S.333-346 (14 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0278-7393
Schlagwörter	Geographic Location; Multidimensional Scaling; Cognitive Psychology; Cognitive Processes; Computation; Geographic Regions; Municipalities; Spatial Ability; Learning Strategies; Global Approach; Item Analysis; North America; United States + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Mehrdimensionale Analysis; Kognitive Psychologie; Cognitive process; Kognitiver Prozess; Magistrat; Räumliches Vorstellungsvermögen; Learning methode; Learning techniques; Lernmethode; Lernstrategie; Globales Denken; Itemanalyse; Nordamerika; USA
Abstract	The authors examined whether absolute and relative judgments about global-scale locations and distances were generated from common representations. At the end of a 10-week class on the regional geography of the United States, participants estimated the latitudes of 16 North American cities and all possible pairwise distances between them. Although participants were relative experts, their latitude estimates revealed the presence of psychologically based regions with large gaps between them and a tendency to stretch North America southward toward the equator. The distance estimates revealed the same properties in the representation recovered via multidimensional scaling. Though the aggregated within- and between-regions distance estimates were fitted by Stevens's law (S. S. Stevens, 1957), this was an averaging artifact: The appropriateness of a power function to describe distance estimates depended on the regional membership of the cities. The authors conclude that plausible reasoning strategies, combined with regionalized representations and beliefs about the location of these relative to global landmarks, underlie global-scale latitude and distance judgments. (Author).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2017/4/10