Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Learning The Spatial Layout Of A New Real-World Environment, Delaney Spencer

Brescia Psychology Undergraduate Honours Theses

Cognitive maps are mental representations of the configuration of landmarks from an environment (Tolman, 1948; O’Keefe & Nadel, 1978). Broad individual differences in the accuracy of cognitive maps exist, however, it is not yet clear what underlies these differences (Weisberg et al., 2013). In the current study, participants first completed a spatial perceptive-taking task called the Spatial Orientation Test (SOT; Hegarty & Waller, 2004). They then were taken on a guided walking tour of an unfamiliar area of campus where they were asked to remember the names and locations of eight target landmarks. Participants’ ability to create a cognitive map …