ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the paradigms that produce error to enable comparisons to the research described on systematic errors in cognitive maps. Language serves as a surrogate for experience, not just perceptual experience, but emotional experience as well. Moving descriptions of human interactions can make us laugh or cry, just as moving descriptions of space can make us feel the grandeur of a mountain range or the bustle of a city or the barrenness of a desert. To investigate whether narrative perspective is reflected in spatial mental models, we wrote route and survey descriptions of each of four familiar environments, in order of size, a convention center, a zoo, a town, and a recreational area, each containing about a dozen landmarks. The research with Taylor provided evidence that spatial mental models of environments too large to be seen at one viewing can be perspective-free.
