Categorical & coordinate spatial information: Can they be disentangled in sketch maps?

Humans tend to encode the environment by means of two types of spatial relations: coordinate (metric) and categorical (nonmetric). The present research contributes to methods for disentangling the contribution of categorical and coordinates spatial relations in sketch maps and investigates the role of familiarity with spatial information in accurate encoding of these spatial relations. The results of three experiments show that as familiarity with spatial layout increases, differences between categorical and coordinate spatial relations tend to decrease. Moreover, they reveal that the way in which spatial information has been acquired – through navigation or map study - affects performance. Navigation favours coordinate encoding, while map study favours categorical encoding. Finally, gender differences did not emerge when spatial information was acquired through navigation, but they were present in the case of map study acquisition. In conclusion, it seems possible to extract reliable and independent information on both categorical and coordinate spatial mental representations using sketch maps.