Abstract
Subjects were required to judge which of two straight-line distances was shorter in the context of a speeded-response task. In the “memory” condition of the experiment, these distances corresponded to imagined distances between geographic landmarks; in the “perception” condition, the distances were displayed visually for subjects to examine. The data were analyzed by examining patterns of latencies and errors as a function of the similarities between the two distances on each trial. These data suggest that different mechanisms mediate the comparison of distances retrieved from memory as compared to perceived distances.
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This research was supported in part by a Rackham Faculty Research Grant to John Jonides. The research was conducted while the first author was a predoctoral trainee supported by NIH Grant 5 T32 MH14254-02.
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Baum, D.R., Jonides, J. Cognitive maps: Analysis of comparative judgments of distance. Memory & Cognition 7, 462–468 (1979). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03198262
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03198262