Spatial knowledge acquisition from direct experience in the ...

98 T. Ishikawa, D.R. Montello / Cognitive Psychology 52 (2006) 93–129
pattern of people’s spatial knowledge, which is quite unusual in the literature on spatial
microgenesis.
1.5. Objectives of this research
Except for the few attempts discussed above, microgenetic development of spatial
knowledge has not been investigated much in controlled longitudinal studies. As we discussed
above, the dominant framework, explicitly proposed 30 years ago, has strongly
inXuenced spatial cognition research in several disciplines; even if not cited by name, its
concepts of nonspatial landmark knowledge and, especially, nonmetric and sequential
route knowledge still echo through the writings of various cognitive-science Welds (as we
cited above). This is true even though it has never received clear empirical support. Likewise,
critiques of the dominant framework and the ideas suggested as alternatives have not
had much empirical research speciWcally directed at them. In our research, therefore, we
aim to investigate how people’s spatial knowledge of the environment, particularly the
accuracy and precision of their knowledge, develops over time.
We are speciWcally motivated by three major research questions. Our Wrst question concerns
the development of metric knowledge (distances and directions) in a new environment
learned directly via locomotion. In particular, we look at the level of people’s
conWgurational understanding of routes (i.e., beyond the sequential, nonmetric route
knowledge of the dominant framework’s terminology). Our second question concerns people’s
ability to integrate separately learned places into a common frame of reference (i.e.,
the acquisition of integrated survey knowledge). Related to this question, we also look at
whether people acquire spatial knowledge diVerently when they travel a route in two opposite
directions, compared to when they travel a route in only one direction. Our third major
question concerns individual diVerences in people’s spatial knowledge; speciWcally, how
diVerent individuals’ developmental curves look with respect to accuracy and a developmental
pattern, and whether the diVerence is especially large for integration.
To investigate these questions, we conducted a longitudinal experiment in a naturalistic
setting, with as much experimental control as possible concerning the amount and method of
exposure to the environment. We examined participants’ performance on tasks that assessed
their spatial knowledge, both metric and nonmetric, once a week for 10 consecutive weeks.
1.6. Predictions of the dominant and continuous frameworks
If spatial microgenesis progresses through qualitatively distinct stages as conceived by
the dominant framework, participants’ performance on metric tasks should be at or near
chance level in early sessions. Only after repeated sessions, participants’ performance
should become better than chance and begin to improve. On the other hand, if spatial
microgenesis is continuous, as the continuous framework argues, participants’ performance
should be at least better than chance from the Wrst session and gradually improve.
Both the dominant and continuous frameworks agree that the acquisition of integrated
conWgurational knowledge (or survey knowledge) is a large, sophisticated step in microgenetic
development. If so, people’s performance should be poor on between-route, as
opposed to within-route, tasks, at least in early sessions. Also, their performance should be
aVected by the complexity of routes. Fig. 1 schematically illustrates the predicted patterns
of development by the two frameworks.