Cognitive maps: Analysis of comparative judgments of distance

Subjects were required to judge which of two straight-line distances was shorter in the context of a speeded-response task. In the “memory” condition of the experiment, these distances corresponded to imagined distances between geographic landmarks; in the “perception” condition, the distances were displayed visually for subjects to examine. The data were analyzed by examining patterns of latencies and errors as a function of the similarities between the two distances on each trial. These data suggest that different mechanisms mediate the comparison of distances retrieved from memory as compared to perceived distances.