A Psychological Study

In cooperation with the DFG project MeMoSpace (G. Strube, C. Schlieder, and R. Rauh; Freiburg) we got 26 University of Freiburg students to perform the reasoning task. (see section An Example)

The subjects were given the two maps. After solving the positioning task they had to report verbally how they got to their judgement.

Subjects were classified according to their verbal report and the evaluation possibilities described above (3 subjects were excluded).

Most subjects read the schematic map as containing rough information about cardinal directions. Results were as follows:

number of evaluation subjects / possibility evaluation choice

4 (17.4%) 2

8 (34.8%) 3

9 (39.1%) 4

2 (8.7%) mistakenly inferred Schlump on the city train line through Dammtor

The positions estimated by the subjects, the areas corresponding to evaluation possibilities 3 and 4, the 95% confidence ellipses for the respective guesses, and the real position of Schlump in the city map.