Large-Scale Spatial Cognition

The Hegarty Spatial Thinking Lab conducts a broad range of research on spatial cognition in large, environment-scale settings, which complements the lab's other focus on interaction with small-scale objects, figures, and displays. The differences (and overlap) between these two scales of behavior and cognitive processes has proven to be a worthwhile topic of research in itself, as has the effect of individual differences (Hegarty, Montello, Richardson, Ishikawa & Lovelace, 2006). One key measure of individual differences that has been developed in the lab is a self-report measure of sense of direction (Hegarty, Richardson, Montello, Lovelace & Subbiah, 2002).

When studying large-scale spatial cognition, we consider numerous forms of spatial information: real-world environments, virtual environments, maps, route directions, gestures, and both written and spoken descriptions. As a source of spatial knowledge, each representation leads to a somewhat different pattern of performance and error. And when participants in our experiments are asked to produce and act with one or another of those representations, we are provided with a distinct glimpse at their "cognitive maps."

Recently we (in particular, Drew Dara-Abrams) have also become interested in the role of an environment's physical form and how the design of a setting shapes the spatial behavior and cognition of its users. Computational modeling techniques developed by architects and urban planners, such as space syntax, are allowing us to formally describe the layout of an environment and to extract quantitative measures that can be compared with behavioral measures of spatial cognition. Much of this research has been conducted in collaboration with Prof. Dan Montello (in the UCSB Department of Geography).

Publications

Hegarty, M., Montello, D. R., Richardson, A. E., Ishikawa, T. and Lovelace, K. (2006) Spatial Abilities at Different Scales: Individual Differences in Aptitude-Test Performance and Spatial-Layout Learning. Intelligence, 34, 151-176. [PDF]

Montello, D. R., Waller, D., Hegarty, M & Richardson, A. E. (2004). Spatial memory of real environments, virtual environments, and maps. In G. Allen (Ed.). Human Spatial Memory: Remembering Where (pp. 251-285). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Waller, D., Montello, D. R., Richardson, A. E. & Hegarty, M. (2002). Orientation specificity and spatial updating of memories for layouts. Journal of Experimental Psychology, Learning, Memory & Cognition, 28, 1051-1063.

Montello, D. R., Richardson, A. E., Hegarty, M & Provenza, M. (1999).  A comparison of methods for estimating directions in egocentric space. Perception, 28, 981-1000.

Richardson, A. E., Montello, D. & Hegarty, M. (1999).  Spatial knowledge acquisition from maps, and from navigation in real and virtual environments. Memory & Cognition, 27, 741-750.

Lovelace, K.L., Hegarty, M., & Montello, D. R. (1999) Elements of good route directions in familiar and unfamiliar environments. In  Freksa, C., & Mark, D. M. (eds.). Spatial information theory: Cognitive and computational foundations of geographic information science. (Lecture Notes in Computer Science 1661). Berlin: Springer.

Ferguson, E. L. & Hegarty, M. (1994).  Properties of cognitive maps constructed from text.  Memory & Cognition, 22, 455-473.

Department of Psychology • University of California, Santa Barbara
Contact Mary Hegarty with questions. Created and maintained by Drew Dara-Abrams.