Familiarity expands space and contracts time
Open accessAbstract
When humans draw maps, or make judgments about travel-time, their responses are rarely accurate and are often systematically distorted. Distortion effects on estimating time to arrival and the scale of sketch-maps reveal the nature of mental representation of time and space. Inspired by data from rodent entorhinal grid cells, we predicted that familiarity to an environment would distort representations of the space by expanding the size of it. We also hypothesized that travel-time estimation would be distorted in the same direction as space-size, if time and space rely on the same cognitive map. We asked international students, who had lived at a college in London for 9 months, to sketch a south-up map of their college district, estimate travel-time to destinations within the area, and mark their everyday walking routes. We found that while estimates for sketched space were expanded with familiarity, estimates of the time to travel through the space were contracted with familiarity. Thus, we found dissociable responses to familiarity in representations of time and space. © 2016 The Authors Hippocampus Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
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Familiar locations are drawn larger on maps than are unfamiliar locations.
“and familiar locations are drawn larger on maps than are unfamiliar locations 141 (Box 1).”
From From cognitive maps to spatial schemas (2023) · cites this paper as [141]
Familiar places are drawn larger than unfamiliar places.
“This value attribution may be reflected in the finding that familiar places are drawn larger than unfamiliar places 141 , as well-known places are most likely to be valued or to contain reward.”
From From cognitive maps to spatial schemas (2023) · cites this paper as [141]
Recent evidence indicates that turns in a path and familiarity with an environment can impact representations of distance.
“Recent evidence indicates that turns in a path and the familiarity with an environment can also impact on representations of distance (Bonasia et al. 2016; Jafarpour and Spiers 2016; Brunec et al. 2017).”
From Hippocampal and Retrosplenial Goal Distance Coding After Long-term Consolidation of a Real-World Environment (2019) · cites this paper as Jafarpour and Spiers 2016
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- Authors
- Jafarpour, A., & Spiers, H.
- Affiliations
- University of California, Berkeley (US)
- University College London (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Jafarpour, Anna
- Venue
- Hippocampus
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2016-11-02
- Volume
- 27
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 12-16
- ISSN
- 1050-9631 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC5214369
- OpenAlex
- W2539119223
- Cited by
- 52
- References
- 34
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 6 · 2023: 2 · 2022: 5 · 2021: 3 · 2020: 3 · 2019: 24 · 2018: 3 · 2017: 2
- FWCI
- 8.40
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Locations
- Hippocampus (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- James S. McDonnell Foundation
- Wellcome Trust (094850/Z/10/Z)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Automotive Engineering › Spatial Cognition and Navigation
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Memory and Neural Mechanisms
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Place Attachment and Urban Studies
- Keywords
- spatial familiarity, travel time estimation, cognitive maps, mental representation of space, mental representation of time, sketch maps, grid cells, spatial scaling, international students
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Female, Humans, Male, Space Perception, Time Perception, Recognition, Psychology, Spatial Navigation
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