Decomposing geographical judgments into spatial, temporal and linguistic components.

Autor: Gatti D; Department of Brain and Behavioral Sciences, University of Pavia, Piazza Botta 6, 27100, Pavia, Italy. daniele.gatti@unipv.it., Anceresi G; Department of Brain and Behavioral Sciences, University of Pavia, Piazza Botta 6, 27100, Pavia, Italy., Marelli M; Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy.; NeuroMI, Milan Center for Neuroscience, Milan, Italy., Vecchi T; Department of Brain and Behavioral Sciences, University of Pavia, Piazza Botta 6, 27100, Pavia, Italy.; Cognitive Psychology Unit, IRCCS Mondino Foundation, Pavia, Italy., Rinaldi L; Department of Brain and Behavioral Sciences, University of Pavia, Piazza Botta 6, 27100, Pavia, Italy.; Cognitive Psychology Unit, IRCCS Mondino Foundation, Pavia, Italy.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Psychological research [Psychol Res] 2024 Jul; Vol. 88 (5), pp. 1590-1601. Date of Electronic Publication: 2024 Jun 05.
DOI: 10.1007/s00426-024-01980-7
Abstrakt: When mentally exploring maps representing large-scale environments (e.g., countries or continents), humans are assumed to mainly rely on spatial information derived from direct perceptual experience (e.g., prior visual experience with the geographical map itself). In the present study, we rather tested whether also temporal and linguistic information could account for the way humans explore and ultimately represent this type of maps. We quantified temporal distance as the minimum time needed to travel by train across Italian cities, while linguistic distance was retrieved from natural language through cognitively plausible AI models based on non-spatial associative learning mechanisms (i.e., distributional semantic models). In a first experiment, we show that temporal and linguistic distances capture with high-confidence real geographical distances. Next, in a second behavioral experiment, we show that linguistic information can account for human performance over and above real spatial information (which plays the major role in explaining participants' performance) in a task in which participants have to judge the distance between cities (while temporal information was found to be not relevant). These findings indicate that, when exploring maps representing large-scale environments, humans do take advantage of both perceptual and linguistic information, suggesting in turn that the formation of cognitive maps possibly relies on a strict interplay between spatial and non-spatial learning principles.
(© 2024. The Author(s).)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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