Siegel and White proposed that in learning a new space, we develop different types of knowledge at different rates, in the following order. They are distorted in characteristic ways. This shows the influence of schematization and categorization on memory for spaces. Places that are related in the environment in non-spatial ways are judged to be closer than places from different categories. Most people say San Diego, but in fact it is Reno.
People judge the general orientation of California as vertical, when in fact it is more diagonal.
When we learn a spatial layout from a certain orientation, we tend to be better able to point to objects in that that layout from the same orientation. Individual Differences in Spatial Learning Hegarty and her colleagues studied ability to learn spatial layouts from walking through an environment, from a video taken by someone walking in the environment, and from a virtual environment. They were also interested in whether spatial learning is related to small scale spatial ability as measured by tests of mental rotation etc and to people s self reports of their own sense of direction . They found that ability to learn from direct experience in an environment is not exactly the same as ability to learn from a video or virtual environment.