| Abstract: | The traveling salesman's problem, in which one decides which order between n locations minimizes total travel distance, was used as a laboratory analogue of spatial decisions in large-scale environments. In an experiment in which university students were observed while solving this problem, a group who received numerical information about distances between locations was found to minimize local distances rather than total distance, that is, to choose first the closest location from the starting location, then the closest location from that chosen, and so forth. However, if a picture of the locations was presented, total distance was minimized more frequently than local distances, presumably because subjects changed their decisions which minimized local distances when they discovered spatial patterns indicating that a shorter path existed. It was also found that a picture did not always have to be presented because subjects mentally constructed a functionally equivalent spatial representation from pieces of direction and distance or only direction information. This finding was even clearer when subjects were allowed to draw pictures of the locations. |
