Mental mapping of a megastructure.

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Abstract
The acquisition of spatial information about a large multi-functional complex building [in humans] was studied by obtaining distance estimations, confidence judgments and imagery reports. Magnitude estimation functions for particular sets of distances were computed for each subject by the method of iteratively weighted least squares, yielding an exponent and weights for each distance. Improvement in performance on different measures with increasing experience was not uniform; indeed, certain distances were increasingly in error. Apparently, abstract schemata operate at all levels of exposure but structural consistency increases. Directional asymmetries in distance judgments which accompanied shifts in imagery are taken as evidence for qualitatively different encodings of the environment, abstract vs. scenographic. Superior performance on the distance estimation task evidently depends on the construction of a dynamic abstract representation or working map.

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