Abstract
Previous research suggested that the apparent hierarchical organization of landmarks in an environment will influence subjects’ judgments about spatial characteristics of that environment. We extended this previous work to a natural environment that has no predetermined, well-defined hierarchical structure. Using an algorithm that generates a hierarchy of landmarks from recall protocols, we constructed hypothesized clusterings of landmarks for a set of subjects familiar with the space. Then we tested these hypothesized clusters in a series of tasks, all of which required judgments about distances in the space. The results of these tests suggest that subjects do cluster landmarks on the basis of nonspatial attributes, and that the clusters have consequences for performance in various tasks that require access to spatial information.
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The research reported hereto was supported in part by NSF Grant BNS-76-82806 to John Jonides and Judith Reitman and in part by Grant 82-0297 from AFOSR to John Jonides. The article is based on the doctoral dissertation of Stephen Hirtle, submitted to the University of Michigan. This study was guided by invaluable discussions with Judith Reitman, Henry Reuter, Keith Holyoak, J. E. Keith Smith, and John Holland.
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Hirtle, S.C., Jonides, J. Evidence of hierarchies in cognitive maps. Memory & Cognition 13, 208–217 (1985). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03197683
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03197683