Nancy Franklin

Searching Imagined Environments

Subjects read narratives describing directions of objects around a standing or reclimng observer, who was periodically reoriented. RTs were measured to identify which object was currently located beyond the observers head, feet, front, back, fight, and left. When the observer was standing, head/feet RTs were fastest, followed by front/back and then right/left. For the reclining observer, front/back RTs were fastest, followed by head/feet and then right/left. The data support the spatial framework model, according to which space is conceptualized in terms of three axes whose accessibility depends on body asymmetries and the relation of the body to the world. The data allow rejection of the equiavailability model, according to which RTs to all directions are equal, and the mental transformation model, according to which RTs increase with angular disparity from front.

Switching points of view in spatial mental models.

In six experiments, subjects read narratives describing varying spatial scenes with more than one point of view. They were probed with questions about objects located in six directions from each character’s point of view. Subjects’ response times were consistent with a one place-one perspective rule. They seemed to form separate mental models for separate places and to take a character’s perspective when there was only one relevant character in a scene, but they seemed to take a neutral perspective when there was more than one probed point of view, rather than switch perspectives.

Parsing surrounding space into regions.

Surrounding space is not inherently organized, but we tend to treat it as though it consisted of regions (e.g., front, back, right, and left). The current studies show that these conceptual regions have characteristics that reflect our typical interactions with space. Three experiments examined the relative sizes and resolutions of front, back, left, and right around oneself. Front, argued to be the most important horizontal region, was found to be (a) largest, (b) recalled with the greatest precision, and (c) described with the greatest degree of detail. Our findings suggest that some of the characteristics of the category model proposed by Huttenlocher, Hedges, and Duncan (1991) regarding memory for pictured circular displays may be generalized to space around oneself. More broadly, our results support and extend thespatial framework analysis of representation of surrounding space (Franklin & Tversky, 1990).

Reality monitoring of physically similar and conceptually related objects

Three studies showed that information used in determining a target memory’s source may be derived not only from the target event itself, but also from other nontarget events or memories. Subjects were more likely to claim that an imagined object was perceived when it physically resembled or was conceptually related to another specific item that was actually perceived, relative to when there was no physical resemblance or semantic relation. Furthermore, error rates for imagined items increased with the number of perceived items that they resembled. However, subjects’ orienting task at encoding (perceptually biased or perceptually plus conceptually biased) did not systematically affect error rates. The results indicate that reality monitoring decisions about a target object are influenced by similar physical and conceptual information that was derived from other objects.

Three Spaces of Spatial Cognition

As we move about and interact in the world, we keep track of different spaces, among them the space of navigation, the space immediately around the body, and the space of the body. We review research showing that these spaces are conceptualized differently. Knowledge of the space of navigation is systematically distorted. For example, people mentally rotate roads and land masses to greater correspondence with global reference frames, they mentally align roads and land masses, they overestimate distances near the viewpoint relative to those far from it. These and other distortions indicate that the space of navigation is schematized to elements and spatial relations relative to reference frames and perspective. The space around the body is organized into a mental framework consisting of extensions of the major axes of the body. Times to report objects around the body suggest that the relative accessibility of the axes depends on their perceptual and functional properties and the relation of the body to the...

Spatial mental models from descriptions

Spatial language is widely used, both literally to describe space and figuratively to express a broad range of ideas. This article reviews two projects studying the nature of mental representations of space induced entirely by language. The first project investigates perspective in descriptions of large‐scale (e.g., convention center, town) space. People typically describe environments using a route or survey perspective, or a mixture of both. Route perspectives take a view from within the environment and describe the locations of landmarks with respect to a moving observer in terms of the observers left, right, front, and back. Survey perspectives take a view from above the environment and describe locations of landmarks with respect to each other in terms of north, south, east, and west. Features of the environment, such as having a single or multiple path, affect choice of perspective. In comprehension, readers seem to form the same perspective‐free mental representation irrespective of description perspective. They respond with equal speed and accuracy to inference questions from either perspective regardless of read perspective. The second project investigates mental representations of the objects located immediately around the body. Readers seem to form mental spatial frameworks, extensions of the three body axes, associating objects to the frameworks. The accessibility of the three axes depends on characteristics of the body, characteristics of the perceptual world, and posture of the observer. For example, for an upright observer, times to access objects along the head/feet axis are fastest because it is an asymmetric axis of the body and is correlated with the only asymmetric axis of the world, that created by gravity. Times to access objects along the front/back axis are next fastest as it is an asymmetric axis of the body, and times to the left/right axis are slowest as it is an axis with few asymmetries. Evidence for the spatial framework hypothesis was obtained in a variety of situations, varying posture, perspective, number of observers, and cause of reorientations.

Retrieving actions from goal hierarchies

We studied how rapidly subjects could retrieve the order of two actions in a goal hierarchy whose actions were temporally ordered. The subjects learned a four-level hierarchy of 27 goals and actions regarding steps for joining a secret club. Then, with respect to this hierarchy, they verified statements of the form “In order for you to accomplish X, you must have already completed Y” Response times were faster the farther X was from Y in the temporal ordering of the actions, which suggests that judgments were derived by referring to the relative locations of X and Y on a fuzzy time line. Yet when asked to indicate the structure of the subgoal relationships, the subjects drew the hierarchy. This result was replicated in a second experiment. Moreover, when asked to judge whether two actions came from the same one of two plans, the subjects responded no faster for close than for distant actions.

Language as a Means of Constructing and Conveying Cognitive Maps

We frequently rely on language, in conjunction with or in the absence of perceptual experience, to convey spatial information. Production of such descriptions involves a host of processes, including selection of important elements to communicate, temporal structuring of the elements, selection of frames of reference and perspectives, and verbal regularization of spatial relations. The addressee is then faced with the challenge of forming a spatial model from linearly ordered simple expressions. The literature shows that memory representations for these described configurations bear some functional resemblance to perceptually derived representations. However, their construction is not guaranteed, and even when mental models are created, they do not always appear to have perception-like properties. How we organize memory for described spatial information appears to depend not only on the structure of the described space itself, but also on cues from the text, characteristics of our typical interactions with space, and the nature of the expected task.

Long-Term Spatial Representations From Pictorial and Textual Input

Spatial information is typically represented in memory in a form that facilitates operations like spatial reasoning, mental navigation, search, and perspective shifts. This apparently happens whether learning is through primary experience or description, and it appears to happen whether the learned configuration is large- or small-scale. Typical methods used in the cognitive map and mental models literatures diverge, however, in several ways that might affect representation (e.g., medium of input at learning, size of the referent situation, and delay from learning to test). The cognitive map literature shows that spatial representation of large-scale environments persists, though often biased toward spatial simplification over time. This represents one optimal solution to the problem of retaining information in a form that facilitates likely cognitive operations while minimizing resources devoted to storing the information. The current studies investigate whether mental models learned from description are subject to the same tendencies or whether they revert with time to a less spatial format that better optimizes cognitive economy. Secondly, these studies investigate the extent to which visual input at learning affects how the information is represented.

Comments on “Measuring memory for source: Some theoretical assumptions and technical limitations”

Researchers must consider limitations and assumptions inherent in their measure of source monitoring when drawing conclusions, an important point raised by Murnane and Bayen (1998). However, the issues they raise do not invalidate the conclusions we draw from the findings reported in Henkel and Franklin (1998). Issues regarding conclusions about source monitoring performance, the relation between recognition and source accuracy, and the use of empirical and multinomial analyses are discussed.