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DOI: 10.1016/j.jenvp.2017.12.004

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 Journal of Environmental Psychology xxx (2017) xxx-xxx

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of Environmental Psychology

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journal homepage: www.elsevier.com

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Geometrical distortions in geographical cognitive maps
Marco Costaa, ∗, Leonardo Bonettib
a
Department of Psychology, University of Bologna, Italy
b
Center for Music in the Brain, Department of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus University & The Royal Academy of Music, Aarhus, Aalborg, Denmark

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ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Article history: A map sketching methodology was applied in three studies to assess geometrical distortions in large-scale
Received 28 August 2017 cognitive geographical maps. In the first study, 198 participants sketched Italy's national and regional borders
Received in revised form 3 December 2017 marking the 20 regional capital locations. Furthermore, in 40 city pairs, participants had to indicate which city
Accepted 11 December 2017
was further north or further west. Results showed a remarkable rotation of Italy's longitudinal axis of 26.74°
Available online xxx

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toward the vertical axis. Furthermore, Italy's latitude span was significantly underestimated while longitude
span was largely overestimated, leading to a more compact shape. Italy's longitude-axis rotation led to misat-
Keywords: tributions in the evaluation of longitude and latitude differences between city pairs. In the second study 185
Cognitive maps participants were requested to sketch Sardinia, an Italy's island facing the south part of the west coastline. Re-
Cognitive geography
Naïve geography
Distance estimation
Geometrical distortions
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sults showed that in the cognitive map the island was shifted significantly toward north, facing the central part
of the west coastline. As occurred for the Italy's shape in the first experiment, the island was underestimated
in height and overestimated in width, resulting in a more compact shape. In the third study, 212 participants
sketched the border outlines of 10 European Union countries, Great Britain and Switzerland marking the po-
sition of the national capitals. The results showed a general distance underestimation of continental capitals
and a distance overestimation for London and Dublin. The capitals tended to be aligned along the vertical and
horizontal axis. Overall, the three studies showed remarkable effects of rotation, alignment, shape compact-
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ness, regression toward the mean in large-scale geographical cognitive maps.
© 2017.

1. Geographical cognitive maps hand experience is supplemented by secondary sources of informa-

tion such as cartographic maps. This distinction reflects the primary
Geographical space is a large-scale space that cannot be observed and secondary categorization of spatial representation proposed by
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from a single viewpoint nor experienced by direct first-hand
senso-motoric experience (Kuipers & Levitt, 1988; Kuipers, 1978).
According to cognitive geography, the study of large-scale space and
environment human cognition (Montello, 2009), geographic knowl-
edge is acquired through first-hand environmental experience (internal
knowledge), or through the interaction with symbolic artefacts, such
as cartographic maps and verbal descriptions (external knowledge).
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McDonald and Pellegrino (1993) and Presson and Hazelrigg (1984).
Topographical distortions are introduced in the cartographic trans-
lation from the earth 3D spherical surface to a 2D flat surface, and
in some projections these distortions are particularly relevant. For in-
stance, in the relatively common Mercator cylindrical projection there
is conspicuous size enlargement on regions of high latitudes that there-
fore appears much greater than equal geographic regions near the

Geographic knowledge includes spatial properties such as distances,
directions, connectivity, and non-spatial knowledge related to tempo-
ral and thematic properties such as climate, language, and culture. Ge-
ographical reasoning is an important cognitive process, necessary for
the navigation in the environment and relevant for social identity reg-
ulation (Taylor, 2010).
Spatial and geographic knowledge relies on cognitive or mental
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equator (Murray, 1992; Robinson, 1985, 1990; Saarinene, 1988). Mir-
roring the concept of naïve physics (Proffitt, 1999; Reiner, Slotta,
Chi, & Resnick, 2000; Smith & Casati, 1994), many researches have
explored formalisms and models in naïve geography (Egenhofer &
Mark, 1995) that describe biases and discrepancies between cognitive
and physical geography. Remarkably, the large majority of individ-
uals makes relevant errors in judging relative geographical position-

maps (Evans, 1980; Kitchin, 1994; Nadel, 2013), composed mainly
of landmarks, paths, regions, and boundaries (Lynch, 1960; Tversky,
2003). The cognitive map acquisition process differs according to the
environment scale. Local cognitive maps are acquired by first-hand
experience and are small in scope. As the area represented by the
cognitive map increases (e.g., a city or a geographic region), first-
∗ rotated and aligned so that the longitudinal axis matches the ver-
Corresponding author. Department of Psychology, University of Bologna, Viale
Berti Pichat, 5, I-40127 Bologna, Italy.
Email address: marco.costa@unibo.it (M. Costa)
ing due to a hyper-simplification of cognitive maps (Okabayashi &
Glynn, 1984; Stevens & Coupe, 1978). Stevens and Coupe (1978),
in three studies, showed that superordinate structures systematically
distorted the memory of spatial relationships. These distortions held
for both real-world locations and for simple maps learned in the
laboratory. Barbara Tversky has reported different studies on dis-
tortions in memory for maps (Tversky, 1981, 1992, 1999, 2000).
For example, she showed that North and South America tend to be
tical direction. Alignment was also demonstrated at an inter

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2017.12.004
0272-4944/© 2017.
2 Journal of Environmental Psychology xxx (2017) xxx-xxx
continental level by several studies. For instance, participants showed
a preference for a map in which Europe was placed at the same latitude
of North America, and Africa was placed at the same latitude of South
America, even if in real metric maps Africa's longitude extends also
to central and North America (Tversky, 1981). A rotational alignment
along the north-south axis was also demonstrated for the San Fran-
cisco Bay, which runs north-west to south-east (Tversky, 1981). The
tendency to align geographical units along a vertical array confirms
the privileged status of this axis in sensation, perception, and language
(Guidi & Palmer, 2015; Howard & Templeton, 1966; Howard, 1982;
Palmer, Langlois, Tsang, Schloss, & Levitin, 2011). A similar process
of regularization has been shown also by Moar (1979) who reported
that participants' sketch maps exhibited a rotation of the United King-
dom to upright, even if Scotland is oriented to the west in compari-
son to England. In an urban scale, Byrne (1979) showed that although
the real junctions were characterized by angles in the range 60–70°
or 110–120°, the angles estimated from sketch maps were remark-
ably close to 90°. Other studies supported the key role of verticality
in human perception. Rock (1973), for example, showed that verti-
cal symmetry is more salient than horizontal one, and that both are
more salient than diagonal symmetry. Verticality is also a privileged
dimension for the expression of dominance, sacredness, and attractive-
ness of environmental stimuli (Costa & Bonetti, 2016) and is strongly
connected to cross-modal perceptions such as pitch spatial mapping
(Bonetti & Costa, 2017).
Another important cognitive process that plays a critical role in
the acquisition of geographical knowledge is memory simplification,
ing their outline. When edges have an irregular shape with many an-
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responsible for filtering out irregularities in border lines, straighten-
gles and turns, these tend to be eliminated, retaining the general out-
line. For example, as showed by Milgram (1976) in a sketch task, the
Seine outline in Paris map was considerably straightened. Addition-
ally, Tversky (1981) reported that the Canadian-United States border
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is remembered as straighter than it. Actually is. Moreover, in sketch
maps of urban settings, non-perpendicular intersections are drawn
squared and non-parallel streets get aligned (Appleyard, 1969; Byrne,
1979; Thorndyke, 1981). Even from an early developmental perspec-
tive, and with reference to memory for shapes, Bomba and Siqueland
(1983) showed that 3- and 4- month-old infants preferred prototypical
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geometrical shapes in comparison to distortions of these figures.
2. Distance estimation
Another key element of naïve geography is the cognitive decou-
pling of the horizontal and vertical dimensions in geographical rea-
soning. Three-dimensional space is parsed into a two-dimensional
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plane, considering elevation more as an attribute than an independent
spatial dimension, mirroring the 2 ½ D representation in computa-
tional vision (Marr, 1982). Space is cognitively represented mainly as
two-dimensional, with evidence that height perception is prone to spe-
cific distortions. For example, Jackson and Willey (2011) showed that
height is overestimated more from the top looking down than from
the bottom looking high. This effect has been interpreted through an
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evolutionary perspective because of the significance associated with
height in terms of falling. The effect was confirmed by Stefanucci and
Proffitt (2009). Similarly, Proffitt, Bhalla, Gossweiler, and Midgett
(1995) have found an overestimation of a hill inclination (geograph-
ical slant), when viewing the hill from the top than from the bot-
tom. Overestimation of height was also found in a greater scale with
aircraft pilots were requested to assess the altitude of targets be-
tween 7.5 and 60 m (Ungs & Sangal, 1990). Contrary to the over-
estimation that is usually found in height perception, horizontal
distance perception tends to be progressively underestimated for long
distances (Cutting & Vishton, 1995; Loomis, Da Silva, Fujita, &
Fukusima, 1992; Norman, Todd, Perotti, & Tittle, 1996; Sinai, Ooi,
& He, 1998). On the contrary, in case of short routes, it is usually
overestimated, showing a regression toward the mean effect (Lloyd &
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Gilmartin, 1991). Absolute distance estimation is also influenced by
the observer's eye height with regard to the ground and the terrain tex-
ture gradient of size (Sinai et al., 1998). Remarkably, all these studies
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on distance estimation were mainly conducted on small spatial scales.
Thus, in this paper, we aimed to test if these effects of distance esti-
mation hold also on a large, geographical scale.
A relevant role in cognitive map structure and distance evalua-
tion is played by motivational and emotional attitudes. Carbon and
Hesslinger (2013), for example, showed that Europeans who had a
positive attitude towards US presidential program estimated distances
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between US and European cities as being much smaller compared to
people who were skeptical or negative towards US program. Further-
more, people with negative attitudes toward foreign states or conti-
nents tended to overestimate trans-national or trans-continental ver-
sus intra-national or intra-continental distance estimations (Carbon &
Leder, 2005; Carbon, 2010; Friedman & Brown, 2000). While in Eu-
clidean geometry a fundamental axiom states that distances from point
A to B and from point B to A are equal, in cognitive geography this
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premise is frequently violated. For example, two points within a fig-
ure are judged closer than two equally spaced points between two dif-
ferent figures (Coren & Girgus, 1980). Distance evaluation is strongly
affected by the time it takes to get from one place to another (Kosslyn,
Ball, & Reiser, 1978). An irregular terrain, for example, could lead to
a distance overestimation in comparison to a flat and regular one. Sim-
ilarly, a distance covered in heavy traffic conditions could be overes-
timated in comparison to a condition of smooth-flowing traffic. Sim-
ilarly, routes with many turns, many landmarks, or many intersec-
tions are judged longer (Sadalla & Magel, 1980; Sadalla & Staplin,
1980). Distance overestimation was also found in urban areas with
many bends (Byrne, 1979) or in environments with higher levels of
spatial clutter (Anooshian & Kromer, 1986; Thorndyke, 1981).
People tend to employ hierarchically organized schemes and ref-
erence points to reason in geographic space (Hirtle & Jonides, 1985;
McNamara, Hardy, & Hirtle, 1989). Interestingly, also the choice of
a specific reference point affects distance judgments: distances closer
to a point of reference are overestimated compared to distances fur-
ther from it (Holyoak & Mah, 1982). The inferred locations of cities
along a west-east axis, for example, varied systematically depending
on which coast, Pacific or Atlantic, was indicated as the reference
point. Moreover, places are evaluated closer to a landmark point of
reference than vice versa (Sadalla, Burroughs, & Staplin, 1980). Also
Cadwallader (1979) found an intransitive and noncommutativity prop-
erty related to distance estimation. Over 1500 estimates about which
of two distances was larger between points A and B, in 17.26% of the
cases the distance from point A to B was estimated different from the
distance from point B to A, with some asymmetries as great as 40%.
3. Sketch maps
Sketch maps are a common tool employed for geographic-knowl-
edge communication between humans and have been widely applied
in geospatial reasoning tasks (e.g., Blades, 1990; Tversky, 1981, 1999;
Wang & Schwering, 2009, 2015). Research on sketch maps started
with the seminal work by Lynch (1960), who analyzed inhabitants'
mental images and understanding of cities. Following Lynch's
 Journal of Environmental Psychology xxx (2017) xxx-xxx
work many researchers investigated typical distortions and schemati-
zations introduced in sketch maps (Klippel, Knuf, Hommel, & Freksa,
2005; Lloyd & Heivlyt, 1987; Stevens & Coupe, 1978; Tversky, 1981,
1992; Wang & Schwering, 2009). Reliability and psychometric prop-
erties of sketch maps were tested by Howard, Chase, and Rothman
(1973) who found reliability coefficients ranging from .98 to .99 be-
tween sketch maps, placing objects in scale models, magnitude esti-
mation, and ratio estimates of inter-object distances. Generally, corre-
lation between estimated distances and the actual ones was high only
in small environments. MacKay (1976) observed that sketched maps
were more accurate than pair-distance ones, as replicated by Kerst,
Howard, and Gugerty (1987). Sketch maps exhibit a higher reliabil-
ity on high-scale patterns since low-scale details could be significantly
affected by the participant's drawing skills (Kitchin & Freundschuh,
2000). Blades (1990) assessed the test-retest reliability of sketch maps
drawn by participants who were asked to sketch the same route on two
trials separated by a week. The two sketches were highly overlapping
showing the robust reliability of this methodology. All sketch maps
schematize and highlight the information relevant to their purposes,
and this is very important when drawing inferences about elements
that are omitted from the maps (Tversky, 1999). From a methodolog-
ical perspective Gardony, Taylor, and Brunyé (2016) have developed
the Gardony Map Drawing Analyzer, a software package for computa-
tional sketch map analysis while Jan, Schwering, Wang, and Chipofya
(2014) and Schwering et al. (2014) have developed SketchMapia that
offers qualitative procedures for the alignment of sketch maps to met-
ric maps. Pinheiro (1996), in a study involving Brazilian university
students, used world sketch maps to identify the determinants for the
inclusion and exclusion of nations. He found that world map of most
students included only a very small subset of nations. Their inclu-
sion on sketch maps were due to world indicators of geo-political and
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military power, size of the country, and economic importance, fol-
lowed by less powerful determinants based on cultural similarities and
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location of the country on a world's map. Inclusion of countries in
world's maps in Africans was similarly explored by Chokor (2003).
Sketch maps can also be used for assessing individual differences in
spatial knowledge, as studied by Young (1999) who adopted the map
sketching methodology for the assessment of tourists' spatial concep-
tions of large-scale natural environments. Similarly, Walmsley and
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Jenkins (1992) showed that drivers develop cognitive maps of new ar-
eas quicker than non-drivers, and that people from large cities draw
more detailed maps than people from small towns and rural areas. Fur-
thermore, the effect of aging on sketch map accuracy has been investi-
gated by Muffato, Meneghetti, Di Ruocco, and De Beni (2017), show-
ing a general reduced accuracy in the sketches produced by elderly
participants.
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4. Aims
This paper aimed to contribute to a better formalization of geo-
metrical distortions in geographical large-scale cognitive maps. We
report the results of three studies that examined geometrical nor-
malizations and transformations in geographical cognitive maps us-
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ing a map sketching methodology. The first two studies were cen-
tered on Italy's cognitive map. Italy's longitudinal axis has the spe-
cific geometrical shape of a descending arc (Fig. 1C), developing from
north-west to south-east. It was therefore interesting to test how the
angle of the longitudinal axis is cognitively mapped, and what geo-
metrical transformations are applied to the actual geographical out-
line of Italy's borders. Italy extends mainly in latitude, being relatively
narrow and stretching vertically for 10.41°. We investigated to which
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extent this geometry was preserved in cognitive maps, hypothesizing
that Italy's width would be overestimated and Italy’ height would be
underestimated resulting in a more compact and regular rectangular
shape.
A rotation applied to a geographical region could critically inter-
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fere with the ability to correctly compare longitude and latitude of
pairs of cities included in that territory. To test this effect, in a subtest
of the first study, participants had to report which city was located fur-
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ther north in 20 city pairs differing in latitude from 0.08° to 2.26°, and
which city was located further east in other 20 city pairs with longi-
tude varying from 0.17° to 4.18°.
In the second study we investigated the latitude and longitude
alignment of an island facing the Italy's continental coastline. The
test focused on Sardinia, a large and conspicuous island (24090 km2)
located west of South Italy, beneath Corse (Fig. 7B). We suggested
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a geometrical normalization in which Sardinia's latitude in cognitive
maps would be translated further north, toward a central position, fac-
ing central Italy.
In the third study we amplified the geographical scale, investigat-
ing longitude and latitude cognitive location of 10 European Union
capitals plus London and Bern. We hypothesized a tendency to align
the capital locations toward the horizontal and vertical axes. In addi-
tion, we suggested an underestimation of distances, with the cogni-
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tive map resulting in a more compact and regular geometry. In the
three studies, spatial relations were studied with sketch maps. The tar-
gets were macro-geographical elements such as capital locations, to be
marked with points, or border outlines to be drawn in a very large ge-
ographical scale so that individual drawing abilities would not be crit-
ical (Kitchin & Freundschuh, 2000). Even if we involved local Italian
samples and we proposed tests related to only Italy's and Europe's cog-
nitive maps, our aims were global, trying to map geometrical transfor-
mations and normalizations that can be generally applied to the cogni-
tive representation of large-scale geographical regions.
5. Study 1
5.1. Method
Participants. The sample included 198 university students: 145
females (Mage = 19.51, SD = 1.75), and 53 males (Mage = 20.51,
SD = 5.28). Participants’ home towns were geographically distributed
as follows: 71.1% North Italy, 20.3% central Italy, and 8.6% South
Italy. The study received the approval of the Ethic Committee of the
University of Bologna and participants were requested to sign an in-
formed consent prior to inclusion in the study.
Procedure. The study was divided into three tasks. In the first one,
participants had to sketch Italy's borders and the regional segmentation
on one A4 sheet of paper with a pencil. Italy is administratively di-
vided in 20 regions. For each region, they had to indicate the regional
capital location. The drawing scale was approximately 1:8,000,000.
The task was not time limited. Additional information regarding par-
ticipant's sex, age, and place of origin were also acquired. In the sec-
ond task participants were presented 20 city pairs differing in latitude
from 0.08° to 2.26°. Participants had to indicate which city, within the
pair, was located further north. In the third task participants were pre-
sented 20 city pairs differing in longitude from 0.17° to 4.18°. Partici-
pants had to indicate which city was located further east. The city pairs
for task 2 and 3 are shown in Figs. 5 and 6, respectively.
Data analysis. Analyses of the first task were performed on digi-
tal images of sketch maps. Images were acquired with a 300 dpi reso
4 Journal of Environmental Psychology xxx (2017) xxx-xxx

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 Journal of Environmental Psychology xxx (2017) xxx-xxx 5

lution, resulting in a 3507 × 2480 px matrix. Digitized images were ported in Table 1. After applying Bonferroni correction for multiple
imported and analyzed in Matlab with the Image Processing Tool- testing, all the t-tests were significant and showed that Italy's longitude
box. Italy's geometrical outline was computed tracing four transver- span along the segments was overestimated in sketch
sal segments on each sketch map (Fig. 1). All metric reference dis- maps (Fig. 4). Overestimation was 35.48% for segment , 12.90%
tances were obtained from Google Earth. The segment joined the for , and 42.85% for .

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two west-east extremes in the north area (573.49 km). The segment In a multivariate ANOVA we tested the effect of participant's sex
was positioned at the beginning of the central part of Italy, join- and geographical origin on the ratios , , . Both factors were
ing west and east coastlines with the shorter segment, starting from non-significant.

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C (180.53 km). The segment joined west and east coastlines with Height. Three t-tests compared the ratios with their
the shortest segment starting from E (177.61 km) and originating on
Rome latitude. The segment joined west and east coastlines with reference values 0.35, 0.46, and 0.55. T-test results, means, standard
the shortest segment at the end of the central section, before the bifur- deviation, and effect sizes are reported in Table 2. The t-tests were sig-
cation in the south part (159.71 km). nificant for North, and South Italy, whose lengths were significantly
The points I, L, M, N were placed at the midpoints of, respectively, underestimated in comparison to the actual lengths. Underestimation
the segments . Italy's rotation was defined as the an- was −25.71% for segment and −32.72% for (Fig. 4). In a mul-
tivariate ANOVA, we tested the effect of participant's sex and geo-

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gle between the horizontal line passing through I and the segment
graphical origin on the ratios , , . Both factors were non-sig-
. The angle was computed with Formula (1). Italy's reference rotation
of the segment extrapolated from a metric map was 47.08° (Figs. nificant.
1C, 2 and 3). Latitude comparisons. Table 3 and Fig. 5 show the results for the
20 latitude comparisons between city pairs. The results are ordered by
increasing latitude difference. The first two columns of Table 3 re-
port the two cities of each pair and which one is located further north.
(1) The third column shows the latitude difference and the fourth column
shows the percentage of correct responses. Fifth and sixth columns re-

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port the Chi-square statistics.
Since each sketch map represented Italy on different scales, the
Seventeen out of the twenty comparisons were significant and
analysis for width and height were performed on ratios. Italy's width
showed a polarization of the responses. In 12 cases, latitude assign-
along the segments
computing the ratios: and
ric map for Italy's width were:
was referred to the segment
The reference values from met-
,
the analysis of Italy's height, we computed the ratios
,
,

. In
on dig-
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in red the comparisons with wrong latitude assignment, in blue the
comparisons with correct latitude assignment, and in black the com-
parisons with random assignment. We corrected for multiple compar-
itized sketch maps, comparing the sketch data with the reference val- isons using the Bonferroni adjustment, resulting in a p value of .0025.
The influence of sex on latitude evaluations was analyzed with
ues: , , . Participant's home town (ge-
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Chi-square tests. In none of the comparisons there was a significant
ographical origin) was classified into three categories (north, center, difference between female and male participants. In a regression, we
and south). In the second and third tasks, we analyzed the frequencies tested if the proportion of correct responses was linearly related to lat-
of participants' responses related to the latitude-longitude positions of itude difference. The regression model was not significant (p = .79).
city pairs through independent χ2 tests, corrected for multiple compar- Longitude comparisons. Table 4 and Fig. 6 show the results for
isons with the Bonferroni adjustment. Effect sizes for ANOVAs and the 20 longitude comparisons between city pairs. The first column
t-tests were computed as partial eta squared. shows the city located further west and the second column the city lo-
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5.2. Results
Rotation. Rotation of the longitudinal axis ( ) for all participants'
sketches was compared with a t-test to the 47.08° reference value.
Mean rotation in sketch maps was 73.82° (SD = 9.69), and the t-test
was significant: t(196) = 38.73, p < .001, η2 = .88. A polar histogram
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cated further east. The third column shows the latitude difference and
the fourth column the percentage of correct responses. Fifth and sixth
columns report the Chi-square statistics. The comparisons are also il-
lustrated in Fig. 6. Bonferroni adjustment was applied for multiple
comparisons, resulting in a p value of .0025.
Fifteen out of the twenty comparisons were significant and showed

a polarization of responses. In nine cases, the longitude was wrongly

showing the distribution (N) of longitudinal axis rotation is shown in assigned with p < .0025. In Fig. 6, the comparisons with wrong longi-
Fig. 2. Fig. 3 shows the longitudinal axis of all participants' sketches, tude assignment are highlighted in red, in blue are shown the compar-
as emerging from the concatenation of segment and the isons with correct longitude assignment, and in black are shown the
reference axis from metric map. comparisons with random assignment.
An ANOVA tested the effects of participant's geographical origin Differences between males and females were compared with
and sex on the longitudinal axis rotation, resulting not significant (ge- Chi-square tests and all the comparisons were not significant. A re-
ographical origin: p = .63, sex: p = .74). gression was performed to test if the proportion of correct responses
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Width. In three independent t-tests the ratios , , were was

compared with the reference values .31, .31, and .28. The results,
along with the means, standard deviations, and effect sizes are re

Fig. 1. Two examples of Italy's sketch with regional segmentation (a, b), compared with Italy's outline and regional segmentation from a metric map (C). Reference points and seg-
ments for the analysis are superimposed in red to each map. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the Web version of this article.)
6 Journal of Environmental Psychology xxx (2017) xxx-xxx

linearly related to longitude difference. The model was not significant

(p = .98).

6. Study 2

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In the second study, we investigated a possible case of geometrical
normalization that regarded the localization of a large island within the
Tyrrhenian see that faces Italy's Western coastline. The target island

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was Sardinia, a large extended island covering 24,090 km2, located
south-west to continental Italy (Fig. 1C). It is the second largest island
in the Mediterranean Sea after Sicily. Its latitude extends from 41° 16′
08″ N to 38° 49′ 16″ N, while its longitudinal axis is 260.35 km, for
a mean width of 104.16 km. Similarly to the previous study, a map
sketching methodology was used to assess the latitude and longitude
of Sardinia placement with reference to continental Italy. We hypoth-

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esized a geometrical normalization with a shift of Sardinia's latitude
further north, facing the central part of Italy, instead of facing the
southern part of the peninsula, as in the real placement.
We decided to run a separate experiment for the Sardinia place-
ment, and not to extract this data from the sketch maps of Study 1
because we wanted to isolate the phenomenon from Italy's rotation.
Since study 1 showed a pronounced rotation of Italy's longitudinal axis
of 26.74° in cognitive maps, we argued that this effect could have

Fig. 2. Polar histogram showing the distribution (N) of rotational angle of Italy's lon-
gitudinal axis in sketch maps. The red line shows the reference Italy rotation (47.08°)
from metric map. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the
reader is referred to the Web version of this article.)
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influenced Sardinia placement. To exclude this influence participants
had to sketch the Sardinia outline over a map that included continental
Italy and Sicily from a metric map (Fig. 1C without Sardinia).
6.1. Method

Participants. The sample included 185 university students: 133 fe-

males (Mage = 19.65, SD = 3), and 52 males (Mage = 20.31, SD = 2.19).
The geographical division of participants’ home towns was: 67%
North Italy, 20% central Italy, and 13% South Italy. The study was ap-
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proved by the Ethic Committee of the University of Bologna and the
participants had to sign an informed consent prior to inclusion in the
experimental procedure.
Procedure. Participants were given one A4 sheet of paper con-
taining a schematic outline of continental Italy as presented in Fig.
1C, with the exclusion of Sardinia. After the collection of sociodemo-
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graphic data, participants were requested to draw as accurate as pos-

sible a sketch of the Sardinia's outline, trying to replicate its exact ge-
ographical position in relation to continental Italy. The drawing scale
was approximately 1:8,000,000. The task was not time limited. An ex-
ample of Sardinia's sketch is showed in Fig. 7A.
Data analysis. Sketch images were digitized (300 dpi) on a
3507 × 2480 px matrix, imported and analyzed in Matlab with the Im-
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age Processing Toolbox. The reference points for the triangulation of

the island's geographical positioning are showed in Fig. 7A and B.
Point A was on Rome's coordinates, B was the north extreme point, C
the south extreme point, D the west-middle point, and E the east-mid-
Fig. 3. Italy's longitudinal axis (IL, LM, MN) for all participants' sketch maps. The thick
dle point. Segment measured the latitudinal extension, while seg-
red line shows Italy's longitudinal axis from metric map. (For interpretation of the ref-
erences to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the Web version of this ment measured the longitudinal extension. was the latitude
article.) axis passing through the reference point A with known coordinates
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(i.e., Rome) (Fig. 7B). The angle was used to assess the latitude
of south point C, the angle assessed the latitude of north point
B. F and G were the D and E projections on the reference latitude axis
Table 1 . delineated the longitude of east point E and the longitude
Italy's width ratios along the segments CD, EF, GH in sketch maps compared to the ref-
erence values from a metric map.
of west point D.
Distance ratios were transformed in km comparing the sketch dis-
Ratio Mean (SD) Reference value t p η2 tances with reference distances from the metric map. This allowed a
CD/AB .42 (.09) .31 17.05 <.001 .60
EF/AB .35 (.07) .31 6.43 <.001 .17
GH/AB .40 (.12) .28 11.08 <.001 .62
 Journal of Environmental Psychology xxx (2017) xxx-xxx
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Fig. 4. Italy's width along the segments AB, CD, EF, GH, and Italy's height along the segments IL, LM, MN, in sketch maps (red, left), and in the reference map (blue, right). (For
interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the Web version of this article.)
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more direct interpretation of the results. The reference values for Sar-
dinia latitude and longitude span, as defined by the segments and
(Fig. 7B), were, respectively, 260.35 km, and 104.16 km. These
values were compared to the values obtained from sketch maps with
one-sample t-tests.
Latitude was computed referencing the points B and C to Rome
latitude (yA). The latitude of point C (south extreme), was computed
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with the angle , while the latitude of point B was computed with
the angle . When the latitude of points B and C was further south
than the reference point A, the latitude was entered as negative value.
When the latitude was further north the latitude was entered as posi-
tive value. In sketch maps the latitude of point B was in many cases
further north than Rome, and it was therefore necessary to distinguish
when the angle was extending north or south. Angles and
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were computed with Formula 2.
(2)
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6.2. Results
Width. The longitude span in km inferred from sketch maps was
compared with a one-sample t-test to the reference width of
104.16 km. Mean width in sketches was significantly higher
(M = 121.40 km, SD = 29.04): t(191) = 8.22, p < . 001, η2 = .26 (Fig. 8).
Participant's sex and geographical origin were not critical (p = .68 and
p = .27, respectively).
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Height. Sardinia latitude span, 260.35 km, was compared with a
t-test to the latitude span from sketches. Mean height in sketches was
224.33 km (SD = 52.32), and was significantly lower than the actual
height: t(191) = −9.54, p < . 001, η2 = .32 (Fig. 8). Participant's sex and
geographical origin were not critical (p = .45 and p = .68, respectively).
South latitude. The angle connected the latitude of Sardini-
a's south extreme border with Rome's reference latitude. The reference
angle from the metric map was −46.93°. Mean in sketch maps
was −39.97° (SD = 12.37), which was significantly higher than the ref-
erence value: t(191) = −7.79, p < .001, η2 = .24 (Fig. 8).
Participant's sex was significant: F(1, 186) = 5.73, p = .01, η2 = .03.
Mean angle from females' sketches was −39.24° (SD = 11.16°), while
mean angle in males' sketches was −41.81° (SD = 14.98°). Participan-
t's geographical origin was not significant (p = .16).
North latitude. The angle connected the latitude of Sardini-
a's north extreme border with Rome's reference latitude. The reference
angle from the metric map was −15.75°. Mean in sketch maps
was −6.02°, and it was significantly higher than the reference value:
t(191) = 10.40, p < .001, η2 = .36 (Fig. 8).
Participant's sex was significant: F(1, 186) = 5.51, p = .02, η2 = .03.
Mean angle in females' sketches was −4.91° (SD = 11.66°), while
mean angle in males' sketches was −8.83° (SD = 15.58°). Participant's
geographical origin was not significant (p = .39).
East longitude. The longitude difference between Rome and point
E was 229.34 km in the reference metric map. The mean difference in
sketch maps was 239.27 km (SD = 80.70). The difference was not sig-
nificant (p = .11) (Fig. 8).
West longitude. The longitude difference between points A and
D was 334.1 km in the reference metric map. The mean difference in
8 Journal of Environmental Psychology xxx (2017) xxx-xxx

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Fig. 5. Results of the latitude comparison task. Red lines show the comparisons in which the latitude was wrongly assigned, blue lines show the comparisons in which latitude was
correctly assigned, and black lines show the comparisons with random latitude assignment. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred
to the Web version of this article.)

sketch maps was 360.67 km (SD = 80.86). The difference was signifi- Great Britain and Ireland. We expected a general underestimation of
cant: t(191) = 4.55, p < . 001, η2 = .10 (Fig. 8). distances, a normalization toward a more compact geometry, and a
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tendency to line up and align the capitals along the vertical and hori-
7. Study 3 zontal axes.

In Study 3 geometrical distortions in cognitive maps were inves-

tigated in a larger geographic scale in comparison to the previous
two studies. Considering a sample of Italian participants, they were
asked to sketch the outline of 10 European Union countries plus Great
Britain and Switzerland, and to mark the position of their capital
cities. All the countries were contiguous sharing borders, except for
7.1. Method
Participants. The sample included 212 university students: 146
females (Mage = 20.40, SD = 2.75), and 66 males (Mage = 20.36,
SD = 1.68). The study was approved by the Ethic Committee of the
 Journal of Environmental Psychology xxx (2017) xxx-xxx 9

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Fig. 6. Results of the longitude comparison task. Red lines show the comparisons in which the longitude was wrongly assigned, blue lines show the comparisons in which longitude
was correctly assigned, and black lines the comparisons with random longitude assignment. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred
to the Web version of this article.)

University of Bologna and the participants had to sign an informed Data analysis. All sketch maps were digitized with a 300 dpi res-
consent prior to inclusion in the study. olution resulting in a matrix of 3507 × 2480 px. The sketch maps were
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Procedure. After the collection of sociodemographic data, partic-
ipants were requested to draw a sketch, as accurate as possible for
proportions and geographical placement, of the outline of these coun-
tries: Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium,
Denmark, Switzerland, Austria, Great Britain, and Ireland (Fig. 9).
For each country, they were further requested to mark with a point
the location of the capital city. The sketch map was drawn on one
A4 sheet of paper in landscape orientation, in an approximate scale of
1:15,000,000. The task was not time limited.
imported and analyzed in Matlab with the Image Processing Toolbox.
The spatial coordinates (x, y) were assigned defining the image origin
(x, y) = (0, 0) as the top left corner, and the image end as the bottom
right corner (x, y) = (3507, 2480). For each sketch, we detected the
x, y coordinates of the 12 capitals, and the reference points A and B.
The segment was considered as reference for distance computa-
tion and for scale standardization between the sketch maps. The point
A was placed on the Italy middle-north border, while point B was
placed in the north extreme of the Taranto Gulf, in South Italy. ≃
10 Journal of Environmental Psychology xxx (2017) xxx-xxx

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Fig. 7. Example of a Sardinia's sketch (A), and its exact geographical positioning (B), with the reference points and lines used for the analysis highlighted in red. (For interpretation
of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the Web version of this article.)

Table 2 female participants on the 12 distances and in none of the cases partic-
reference values.

Ratio Mean (SD) Reference value t p

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Italy's height ratios along the segments IL, LM, MN in sketch maps compared to the

η2
ipants’ sex was significant.
Latitude, longitude – Radial coordinates. Latitude and longi-
tude were assessed by the angle resulting from the capital coordinates
with the reference point A. The comparison between mean angle from
IL/AB .26 (.07) .35 −17.70 <.001 .62
LM/AB .45 (.10) .46 −2.50 ns
sketch maps and the reference angle for each of the 12 capitals was
MN/AB .37 (.11) .55 −13.50 <.001 .48 tested with a t-test. The results, along with the descriptive statistics,
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are reported in Table 6.
The angle for Rome was significantly overestimated (+23.69),
875 km in the reference metric map. All distances were computed con- shifting the capital toward the vertical axis passing for A. Vienna was
sidering this reference segment (Fig. 9). significantly shifted further west (−29.32°), reducing its eccentricity.
The point A, given its central location, was also set as a reference Also for Bern there was a regression toward the point A with a sig-
point for computing the radial coordinates of the 12 capitals, as shown nificant reduction of the angle (−25.51°). In case of Paris the angle in
sketch maps matched the reference value. For both Madrid and Lisbon
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in Fig. 9. Latitude was expressed as the angle between the capital, the
reference point A, and the horizontal line passing through A (paral-
lel to the x axis). Clockwise angles were reported in positive values,
while anticlockwise angles were reported in negative values.
Comparisons of distances and angles between sketch maps and
reference values from the metric map of Fig. 9A, were tested with
one-sample t-tests. Bonferroni correction was applied for multiple
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there was a significant drift toward the horizontal axis passing through
A (−15.26° and −12.32°, respectively). Dublin and London were sig-
nificantly shifted further north (+4.99° and +6.6° respectively). Brus-
sels and Amsterdam were significantly moved toward the vertical axis
passing through A (−8.79° and −6.53° respectively). For Berlin the
angle in sketch maps matched the reference value. In case of Copen-

comparisons, considering significant only results with p < .004. hagen there was a significant reduction of its eccentricity with a shift
further west, toward the vertical line passing through A (−7.84).
7.2. Results Connecting the capitals of continental Europe, we obtained a
polygonal shape that is represented in Fig. 10A. The same process
Distances. Actual distances and mean distances from sketch maps was performed with the coordinates of sketched capital locations (Fig.
for the 12 capitals, plus the reference segment are reported in 10B). The area of the polygon in Fig. 10B covered 60.17% of the area
Fig. 9A and B. Table 5 summarizes actual distance, mean distance of the polygon in Fig. 10A.
Differences between males and females for radial coordinates were
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and standard deviation in sketch maps, t-test results, and effect size
for the 12 comparisons between each European Union capital, Lon-
don, Bern and the reference point A. The distance was significantly
underestimated for Rome (−56.46 km), Vienna (−274.92 km), Madrid
(−69.89 km), Lisbon (−201.06 km), Amsterdam (−57.46 km), Berlin
(−191.94 km), and Copenhagen (−187.89 km). The distance was sig-
nificantly overestimated for Bern (+33.67 km), Dublin (+204.62 km),
London (+298.29 km), Brussels (+36.38 km). The mean A-Paris dis-
tance in sketch maps matched the real distance. A repeated-mea-
sure ANOVA tested the differences between male and
tested with a repeated-measure ANOVA and the interaction between
capital radial coordinates and sex was not significant (p = .20).
Distance-estimation error - Three-study comparison. The three
studies focused on different geographical map scales (i.e., a national
scale in the first study, a regional scale in the second study, and a con-
tinental scale in the third study). The sketches in the three studies of-
fer the additional possibility to assess distance estimation on differ-
ent geographical scales. Therefore, we decided to test if the error in
 Journal of Environmental Psychology xxx (2017) xxx-xxx
Table 3
Response Distribution and Chi-Square Statistic for the Latitude Comparisons. The City in the First Column is Located Further North than the City in the Second Column. Rows
Highlighted in Grey Show the Cases in Which Latitude Was Wrongly Assigned With p < .0025 (After Bonferroni Correction).
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distance estimation increased linearly with the geographical scale.
Thus, we entered in a regression model the following values, con-
sidering the actual geographical distances as independent variable
and the errors in estimated distance as dependent variable: a) seg-
ments (Italy's width) and segments (Italy's
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height) from Study 1 (range: 91.92–181.51 km) 1; b) Sardinia width
( ), and height ( ) from Study 2 (range: 104.16–260.35 km); c)
distances from the reference point A to the 12 capitals entered in Study
3 (range: 156.52–1701.91 km). The regression model was significant:
F(1, 18) = 12.34, p = .002, with an adjusted R2 of .37 and ß = .64. For
every kilometer of effective distance, distance error in sketches in-
creased by 118 m.
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8. Discussion
In three studies, we examined geometrical distortions in geograph-
ical large-scale cognitive maps using a map sketching methodology.
Targets were only macro-geographical units such as national bor-
ders and capital cities locations, in order to minimize the effects of
drawing ability on sketch map accuracy (Kitchin and Freundschuh
(2000). The geometrical layout of geographical units such as borders,
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cities, continents, mountains tends to be highly complex and irregu-
lar in shape and surface, being the resultant of many physical and cul-
tural interacting factors. These units tend to be organized in a hierar-
chical scheme in which cities are nested within provinces, provinces
within countries, and countries within continents. People usually em-
ploy this hierarchically organized schemes when making cognitive in-
ferences on geographic space (Hirtle & Jonides, 1985; McNamara et
al., 1989). This complexity prevents an accurate cognitive mapping of
the geographical layout and promotes the use of heuristics that facil-
itate memorization. These heuristics tend to simplify and normalize
geometrical patterns in the direction of an orthogonal layout, introduc-
ing a bias for the vertical and horizontal orientation.
In Study 1, Italy's cognitive map showed a remarkable rotation
of 26.74° that shifted the longitudinal axis toward verticality, even
if a small oblique orientation was retained by the great majority of
participants. On average, in sketch maps the longitudinal axis angle
departed from the vertical axis by 16.18°, a much lower value than
the actual rotation of 42.92°. Previous literature showed that people
tend to localize geographical units hierarchically and relatively, an-
choring the positioning in a top-down process, starting from the larger
geographic units to more refined and small ones (Stevens & Coupe,
12 Journal of Environmental Psychology xxx (2017) xxx-xxx
Table 4
Response distribution and chi-square statistics for the longitude comparisons. Rows highlighted in grey show the cases in which longitude was wrongly assigned.
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1978). Consistently with previous literature, our studies confirmed the
validity of this part-whole heuristic.
In the first study, Italy's rotation along the longitudinal axis had
relevant consequences on latitude and longitude estimations. In 60%
of the latitude comparisons and 45% of the longitude comparisons
for city pairs, the responses were significantly counterfactual, leading
to a wrong assignment. The latitude differential range was 9–278 km,
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while the longitude differential range was 14–356 km, encompassing
a remarkable interval of variation. Interestingly, the wrong assign-
ments were not only limited to short difference in latitude or longi-
tude, but in many cases they were also found for remarkable differ-
ences. For example, Foggia is 270 km further north than Cagliari, but
70.06% of participants considered Cagliari further north than Fog-
gia (Fig. 5). This result can be explained taking into account both
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Italy's rotation and the Sardinia's “centering effect” found in Study
2. Cagliari is the regional capital of Sardinia, an island that faces the
south part of Italy. Study 2 has clearly shown a tendency in cogni-
tive mapping to shift geographical elements toward the center of the
surrounding space. Thus, Cagliari, is shifted north in cognitive maps,
facing the central part of Italy, further north than Foggia. The same
explanation can be applied to the Neaples-Cagliari comparison (Fig.
5). Although Neaples is located 182 km north than Cagliari, 61.22%
of participants evaluated Neaples placed south than Cagliari. In other
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cases, systematic misleading judgments regarded comparisons with
very short latitude difference. For example, Messina-Reggio Calabria
are only 9 km apart for latitude. Given this short difference we ex-
pected a random distribution of latitude assignment. However, 71.72%
of participants wrongly considered Messina placed south than Reggio
Calabria. This result can be explained by a geometrical simplification
process in which Sicily, the island to which Messina belongs (Fig. 5),
is placed further south of continental Italy. This bias cancels the short
intersection in latitude between Messina and Reggio Calabria that can
be found in the reference map (Fig. 5).
The rotation of Italy's longitudinal axis was a key explaining fac-
tor also for wrong longitude assignments found in Study 1. As for lat-
itude, within the range of longitude differential of city pairs consid-
ered in this study (14–356 km), there was not a linear inverse relation
between errors in latitude attribution and latitude difference between
the two cities. The extreme case was the Milano-Palermo pair, with
a longitude differential of 4.18° (356 km) (Fig. 6), in which Palermo
is placed further east than Milano. A very high percentage of respon-
dents (71.22%) considered Palermo to be further west of Milano. Due
to Italy's longitudinal axis rotation in the cognitive map Sicily was
strongly translated toward west, altering all the longitude relations be-
tween cities placed in the north and south of Italy.
 Journal of Environmental Psychology xxx (2017) xxx-xxx 13

In addition to the regression of Italy's longitudinal axis to the or-

thogonal layout, the first study has highlighted a tendency to com-
pact geometrical shapes in geographical cognitive maps, with a regres-
sion of extreme vertexes toward the mean. Italy's shape is narrow and
strongly developed in latitude. The analysis of sketch maps has shown

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a tendency to overestimate Italy's width and to underestimate Italy's
height, resulting in a more compact and symmetrical shape. The width
was overestimated on average by 30.41%, while height was on av-

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erage underestimated by −20.20%-. The same process of regression
toward the mean was found in the second study focused on Sardinia
placement (Fig. 7). As Italy, Sardinia is developed mainly in latitude
than longitude. The analysis of sketch maps has shown an overestima-
tion of Sardinia's width and an underestimation of Sardinia's height,
resulting in a shape regressed toward a more quadratic and compact
form than the real one, that can be inscribed in a vertical rectangle.

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In the third study we revealed a remarkable tendency to underes-
timate distances, especially on a large scale, extending previous re-
sults found on much lower scales (Cutting & Vishton, 1995; Loomis,
Da Silva, Fujita, & Fukusima, 1992; Norman et al., 1996; Sinai et al.,
1998). This bias was confirmed for the continental capitals consid-
ered in Study 3. Mean underestimation was on average 148 km, ex-
cept for Bern and Brussels (whose distances were slightly overesti-
mated of only 35.02 km). In some cases, underestimation was very

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pronounced. For example, Vienna was strongly shifted further west,
with an alignment to Berlin for longitude, and its distance from refer-
ence point A was underestimated for 274.92 km. Lisbon was aligned
with Madrid and its distance was underestimated for 201.06 km. The
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Fig. 8. Sardinia island in its real proportions and localization (red rectangle), and the
localization resulting from sketch maps (blue rectangle). Error bars in the blue rectangle
distance to the most extreme north capitals was also underestimated,
compressing Europe latitude toward a more compact shape, as previ-
ously observed for Sardinia and Italy. The distance to Berlin was un-
derestimated for 191.94 km and the distance to Copenhagen mirrored
show standard deviations for longitude and latitude spans. (For interpretation of the ref-
erences to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the Web version of this
the same tendency for 187.89 km. To the contrary, the distance to
London and Dublin were greatly overestimated. London represented
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Fig. 9. Geographical placement of the 10 European Union capitals plus London and Bern considered in Study 3 (A), with connections to the reference point A. The segment was
a reference segment for distance computation. In B the average placements of the same capitals according to the sketch maps.
14 Journal of Environmental Psychology xxx (2017) xxx-xxx

Table 5
Actual Distance, Mean Distance in Sketch Maps, t-test Results, and Effect Size for the
Comparison Between Each of the 10 European Union Capitals, plus London and Bern,
Considered in Study 3, and the Reference Point A.
Actual distance Distance in sketch maps
tude and latitude. Rome was shifted toward west as a consequence of
Italy's longitudinal axis rotation, Vienna was considerably shifted to-
ward the center, aligning it with Berlin and Copenhagen. Madrid and
Lisbon were positioned further north, toward the central latitude level.
Brussels and Amsterdam were shifted east, toward the central longi-

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Capital - A (km) (km) (±SD) t(211) p tude level. Copenhagen was regressed for both latitude and longitude
Rome – A 582.10 525.64 (65.79) −12.48 <.001 .42 toward the central geometrical barycenter. Another interesting analy-
Vienna – A 603.89 328.97 (155.82) −25.69 <.001 .76 sis of the geometrical relations between European capitals is shown in

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Bern – A 156.52 190.19 (104.75) 4.68 <.001 .09 Fig. 10B. Specifically, connecting the capitals of continental Europe,
Paris – A 655.97 666.25 (233.26) 1.17 ns
the subtended area was reduced by 60.17% in comparison to the same
Madrid – A 1185.35 1115.46 (342.12) 19.92 <.001 .65
Lisbon – A 1701.91 1500.85 (446.46) −6.55 <.001 .17 polygonal area from a cartographic map. Furthermore, Fig. 10B shows
Dublin – A 1552.04 1756.66 (626.60) 4.75 <.001 .10 a geometrical transformation toward a triangle in which the capitals
London – A 1018.24 1316.53 (498.00) 8.72 <.001 .26 tend to be aligned along the three sides. The tendency to straighten,
Brussels – A 692.16 728.54 (502.95) −13.64 <.001 .47 regularize, and simplify in geographical cognitive maps is also shown
Amsterdam 879.77 822.31 (302.73) −9.61 <.001 .30
–A
in Fig. 11, in which the more external capitals were joined in a poly-

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Berlin – A 843.71 651.77 (252.78) −11.23 <.001 .37 gon. Specifically, the irregular polygonal shape obtained connecting
Copenhagen 1246.89 1059 (353.73) 8.65 <.001 .26 the capitals depicted in the cartographic map of Fig. 11A is trans-
–A formed into a square-shape polygon in cognitive maps (Fig. 11B).
These results extend previous literature on systematic distortions in
Table 6 cognitive maps (Appleyard, 1969; Byrne, 1979; Evans, 1980; Lynch,
Actual Angle, Mean Angle from Sketches, t-test Result, and Effect Size for the Com- 1960; Mark, Freksa, Hirtle, Lloyd, 1999; Tversky, 1992, 2000, 2003),
parison Between Each of the 10 European Capitals plus London and Bern, Considered and in the reproduction and memory of visual shapes (Gibson, 1929),
in Study 3, and the Reference Point A. with a geometrical formalization of the processes of simplification,

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Angle in sketch maps
alignment, regression toward the orthogonal axes. We have also found
Reference angle (°) and formalized a “compact-shape heuristic”, in which the geographi-
Capital – A (°) (±SD) t(211) p cal space tends to be transformed in cognitive maps into more com-
pact, equilateral, shape with a higher bilateral symmetry.
Rome – A
Vienna – A
Bern – A
Paris – A
Madrid – A
58.69
−23.51
−148.39
−150.59
148.44
82.52 (13.61)
−52.83 (83.78)
−122.88 (56.08)
−153.81 (21.96)
163.70 (16.91)
−25.48
5.09
−6.62
2.13
−13.10
<.001
<.001
<.001
ns
<.001
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.11
.17

.45
In the three studies we found only one evidence of a male advan-
tage in sketch map accuracy (i.e., Sardinia's south and north latitude
in Study 2). The geographical cognitive maps of males' and females'
participants were largely overlapping. This might be seen in contra-
Lisbon – A 151.96 164.28 (12.55) −14.17 <.001 .49
Dublin – A −144.68 −139.69 (14.64) −4.95 <.001 .10
diction with an established literature that shows a male advantage in
spatial ability (cf., for a review, Reilly & Neumann, 2013; Voyer,
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London – A −139.49 −132.89 (19.48) −4.93 <.001 .10
Brussels – A −126.87 −118.08 (30.23) −4.21 <.001 .07 Voyer, & Bryden, 1995). However, a close examination of this lit-
Amsterdam – −111.18 −104.65 (28.67) −3.31 = .001 .05 erature demonstrates that spatial ability is not a unitary process and
A the effect size of sex difference varies considerably across different
Berlin – A −69.36 −74.11 (25.89) 2.66 ns
Copenhagen – −78.14 −85.98 (22.66) 5.03 <.001 .11 kinds of test and task. Males tend to outperform females in mental ro-
A tation or spatial manipulation of mental images (Reilly & Neumann,
2013), but the difference is reduced in spatial perception tasks, and is
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the case with the highest distortion for distance estimation
(+298.29 km), while the overestimation for Dublin was 204.62 km
(Fig. 9). The reason for this overestimation could be a process of sim-
plification in which London and Dublin are shifted over continental
North Europe, facing Norway.
In this simplification process Ireland is hierarchically dependent on
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even smaller for spatial visualization tasks (Linn & Petersen, 1985).
Sadalla and Magel (1980), for instance, examining the effect of in-
tersections along a route on the estimated length of that route found
no differences between males and females. Although it is difficult to
track a general conclusion since many studies that have investigated
cognitive maps with the sketch methodology have not factorized sex
as an independent variable, it might be hypothesized that sex differ-

the positioning of Great Britain, and is placed midway between Great
Britain's north and south borders, facing the west coastline in its cen-
tral position. Great Britain is moved considerably further north, with
London aligned in latitude to Copenhagen. This eliminates the juxta-
position and intersection between South Great Britain and Northern
France, Belgium, Netherlands, resulting in a more simple and separate
placement. It can also be suggested that in geographical cognition is-
lands could have more degree of freedom to be reallocated for align-
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ences emerge specifically with tasks that require a spatial manipula-
tion, such as mental rotation tasks. However, when the tasks are more
centered on spatial memory processes, as occurred for the tasks used
in our experiments, gender might play a nonsignificant role.
Since sketch maps can be aligned to metric maps in order to fa-
cilitate navigation and map reading (Schwering et al., 2014), our re-
sults can provide the basis for designing and optimizing maps and Ge-

ographic Information Systems that follow human intuition and that

ment and simplification in comparison to continental nations that have
more constraints due to their contiguous borders with neighboring na-
tions.
Analyzing distance estimations from the three studies sketches, we
found a strong linear relationship between distance error and absolute
distance. Specifically, the longer was the distance, the less accurate
was the estimate. This confirms in a much larger geographical scale,
the results of Anooshian and Kromer (1986). The results on radial
coordinates of European capitals showed a tendency to align capi-
tals along orthogonal axes, and a regression toward the central longi
would be therefore more easily accessible and simple for a large range
of users. In a theoretical perspective, the distortions highlighted in
our studies are probably not specific nor exclusive of geographical
cognitive maps but are part of more general cognitive processes in-
volved in environmental perception and memory of shapes and geo-
metrical relationships (see, for example, Tversky & Schiano, 1989).
 Journal of Environmental Psychology xxx (2017) xxx-xxx 15

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Fig. 10. Polygonal area connecting continental European capitals considered in Study 3 in the metric map (A), and in the sketch maps (B).

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Fig. 11. Polygonal area of the surface connecting Rome, Vienna, Berlin, Copenhagen, Dublin, Lisbon, and Madrid in the metric map (A), and in sketch maps (B).
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The reason why they are so pronounced in geographical cognitive References

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tem.
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campuses. Developmental Psychology 2, 854–860.
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