| Some psychologists hold that the effective use of the internal representations of the large scale environment presupposes their alignment with an orienting framework, just as cartographic maps must be lined up with terrain and compass to be helpful in land navigation. Three experiments investigated the effects of deviation between various frames of reference of cognitive maps. In Experiment 1, 90 undergraduates, seated on the campus lawn, drew 8 sketch map routes that led in 8 different directions across the campus. A deviation between visual direction and route direction resulted in a deterioration of sketch map quality. Experiment 2 differed from Experiment 1 in that it was conducted indoors under conditions that prevented the 75 undergraduate subjects from orienting themselves in space, and that the sketch map blanks specified the orientation of the north-south axis. A deviation between the polar coordinates and direction of routes resulted in lower quality sketch maps. In Experiment 3, 16 undergraduates were required to determine whether rudimentary campus maps had properly positioned landmarks. Successive maps were presented in different orientations, so that the north-south axis of one map was rotated from that of the preceding map by 0(DEGREES), 90(DEGREES) or 180(DEGREES). An angular deviation resulted in increased reaction time. All three experiments of this study provided converging evidence that (a) the basic orientation of cognitive maps is north-up, but tends to become aligned with the environment or another frame of reference crucial to a specific task, (b) conflicts of angular deviations between frames of reference of cognitive maps impair performance in tasks related to orientation and way-finding, and (c) the relationship between the degree of deviation and performance is complex. |
