Abstract not found

One of the most consistent findings in the past 30 years of spatial cognition research is that mental representations of spatial information often have a categorical structure. Several converging lines of research provide evidence for the psychological reality of categorical representations of spatial information. For example, when asked whether Se-attle or Montreal is farther north, people typically respond that Montreal is, even though the opposite is true. People make this error because they respond as if all Canadian cit-ies are north of all U.S. cities, even though this categorical knowledge can lead to large errors (Friedman & Brown,

Spatial judgments are affected both by fine-grained and categorical knowledge. We investigated whether, and how, the two forms of knowledge are learned in real-world, navigable space as well as the time course of learning each type of knowledge. Participants were Northwestern University undergraduates who estimated the locations of buildings and other landmarks on campus. The Northwestern campus is roughly divided into three regions whose borders are not easy to discern either from a map or by navigation. Nevertheless, students often refer to these regions linguistically and use them when making housing decisions, choosing classes, etc. We found that knowledge of both the fine-grained configuration of locations and the regional distinctions increased with time. However, regional influences on judgments occurred later in students ’ time on campus. Consequently, computed distances across the nonexistent border between north and south campus locations became more biased with time. The results have implications for understanding how spatial representations develop in navigable environments.