SYMMETRY AND ASYMMETRY OF HUMAN SPATIAL MEMORY

Six experiments investigated the limiting conditions on and the causes of asymmetries in estimates of euclidean distance. Participants estim ated distances between locations on recently learned maps or between b uildings on their college campus. Estimates between landmarks and neig hboring nonlandmarks were often asymmetric, but estimates between othe r pairs of locations were typically symmetric. These and other results were inconsistent with the predictions of models that attribute asymm etries to stimulus or to retrieval bias. A contextual scaling model of asymmetry is proposed. According to this model, asymmetries in proxim ity judgments are caused by general principles of human memory and jud gment: (a) Stimuli differ in the contexts they establish in working me mory, and (b) magnitude estimates are scaled by the context in which t hey are made. (C) 1997 Academic Press.