Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

The separability of spatial and sequential mental representations was examined through the use of sketch-maps and ordered event-lists generated by subjects following the viewing of a videotape depicting movement through a natural space. Prior to viewing, subjects were instructed that they would either a) draw a map of the region depicted and place events on the map (map group), b) make a list of the events they saw in the order they saw them (list group), or c) answer some unspecified set of questions following the video (control group). In fact, subjects did all of the above. Although most measures of spatial and sequential accuracy were unaffected by the instructional manipulation, subjects who expected to draw maps were more likely to correctly indicate that the camera had negotiated the space in a figure-eight path, while subjects in the other groups predominantly indicated circular path shapes. None of our analyses provide any strong evidence that an independent spatial representation exists prior to map-drawing. In fact, the similarity between groups suggests that all subjects utilized similar encoding strategies, but that map subjects specifically attended to features of the film which constrain the overall layout of the space. This research raises specific questions about the mechanisms which allow path segments to be integrated into coherent spatial reference frames.