Rotation, orientation and cognitive mapping

Tversky (1981) has argued that when a map has a natural orientation that does not correspond to that of its frame of reference, conditions are ideal for invoking the heuristic of rotation in its representation as a cognitive map. In the two studies reported here, such a situation was exploited with respect to judgment of orientation to cities within Israel. In both Experiments 1 and 2, which employed a recall-and-production method, a 15° counter-clockwise rotation was predicted and found in orientation judgments.