Mental Maps at a Global Scale

Various groups of students at the University of Alberta were asked to rank a series of cities according to their longitudinal and latitudinal relative positions. The results show considerable errors in the perceived positioning of some cities. Some of these errors reflect expected mental distortions, such as the perceived latitude of Europe with respect to North America, but others are more surprising, such as the western shift of South America or the southern shift of Africa. Analysis also shows that all groups, including geographers, perceived most relative positionings of cities in the same way. An explanation of some of the mental distortions in spatial relations is attempted.