Perception of Map-Environment Correspondence: The Roles of Features and Alignment

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Abstract
Subjects viewed slide-projected photographs of a building and indicated the location from which each photograph was taken by marking a perimeter floor-plan map of the building. Evidence for alignment effects was found; Performance was better when the orientation of the floor-plan map to the subject matched the subject's orientation to the view of the building. Performance was also evaluated with respect to a hypothesized algorithm for decision making in this situation. The pattern of errors generally supported the hypothesis that (a) buildings have features that vary in their salience; and (b) subjects make a sequence of decisions that progressively narrow the range of possible locations, using first the most salient features and moving to the less salient features. The findings have implications for an understanding of the perceptual and cognitive factors that are involved in the use of maps of the kind that contain figural information as well as for techniques of map design.

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