ANALOG PROPERTIES OF COGNITIVE MAPS CONSTRUCTED FROM VERBAL DESCRIPTIONS

Six experiments were conducted to test whether the spatial properties of cognitive maps constructed from verbal descriptions are similar to those of representations derived from visual experience. Data from spatial priming, distance comparison, and mental scanning experiments all suggest that people are able to convert verbal descriptions of configurations into mental representations that reflect the spatial extension of these configurations. In addition, cognitive maps constructed from descriptions exhibit reliable metric properties which make them structurally isomorphic to the corresponding spatial configurations.