Given the assumption that the cognitive map is picture-like, then it should have a specific orientation. Can that orientation be determined after a person has learned a path sequentially, that is, by walking through it? Two experiments were conducted to answer this question. In both experiments, subjects were blindfolded and were walked through paths laid out on a floor. In the first experiment, they were required to draw a picture of the path that they had just walked through; in the second experiment, they were required to locate targets in the path under conditions in which their presumed cognitive maps were either aligned or contraligned with the path. All of the subjects in the first experiment drew the first line segment of the path upward, suggesting that this part of the path was fixed in an upward direction in memory. In the second experiment, subjects were more accurate and faster in locating points on the path when the cognitive map was hypothesized to be aligned with the path than when it was hypothesized to be contraligned. © 1984, Psychonomic Society, Inc.. All rights reserved.
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Palij, M., Levine, M., & Kahan, T. (1984). The orientation of cognitive maps. Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, 22(2), 105–108. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03333776