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The contribution of non-spatial information to geographic reasoning

Richard, Laurence

Abstract Details

2014, Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, Psychology.
Tversky (1981) noted the "Chicago-Rome", in which people tend to assume that Chicago is more northerly than Rome when they are, in fact, both located at 42 degrees above the equator. Friedman and her colleagues (2003) explained this phenomenon by proposing that people use non-spatial information, such as climate, to reason about the locations of cities. The current project aimed at identifying these non-spatial factors. In a first study, participants mentioned a number of attributes that they associate with various cities. Analysis of these protocols revealed three factors that could potentially contribute to geographic biases: the appearance of the city, culture, and climate. To test the potential contribution of these factors, participants in a second study were asked to estimate the distances between North American cities and to judge their similarities on appearance, culture, and climate. Appearance of the city and culture both significantly correlated with the error of the distance estimates, suggesting that the participants' geographic biases covaried with their knowledge of the cities' appearance and culture. Finally, in a third study, participants' understanding of the appearance of European cities was manipulated by showing them pictures taken of other cities. These picture sets were intended to induce either a north/south or an east/west division of Europe among different groups of participants. While participants' ratings of the similarity between the cities varied according to this manipulation, their geographic biases remained unchanged, suggesting that either the appearance of cities does not contribute to geographic biases or that the manipulation used here was not able to influence the participants' geographic biases.
David Waller (Committee Chair)
Leonard Mark (Committee Member)
Leonard Jay Smart (Committee Member)
William Berg (Committee Member)

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Richard, L. (2014). The contribution of non-spatial information to geographic reasoning [Doctoral dissertation, Miami University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1396966668

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Richard, Laurence. The contribution of non-spatial information to geographic reasoning. 2014. Miami University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1396966668.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Richard, Laurence. "The contribution of non-spatial information to geographic reasoning." Doctoral dissertation, Miami University, 2014. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1396966668

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)