People navigate differently in different environments

What is it about?

This study shows that people form different types of mental maps of different types of spaces. If the space being learned is open, people are likely to form a mental map that has information about the straight-line distances and directions between different locations. In contrast, if the space has limited visibility between its parts (e.g. a maze), people are likely to form a mental map that has information about the routes that connect different places (“cognitive graph”), and less about their exact locations.

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Photo by Max Böttinger on Unsplash

Photo by Max Böttinger on Unsplash

Why is it important?

These findings illuminate how people create mental representations of different physical spaces, and may have implications about how they learn abstract spaces.