The Influence of Turns on Distance Cognition

Abstract

Three experiments investigated the route-angularity effect, which is demonstrated when a greater number of turns along a route increases the estimated length. So far, a route-angularity effect has not been demonstrated in school-age children. Because of the lack of a developmental theory, this finding could only be explained by a minor control of environmental features or by the experimental design. The experiments were conducted in a controlled virtual environment. In the first experiment, 11-year-old children explored two routes of equal length, which differed in the number of turns. Each child explored only one of the two routes in the second experiment. Only the first experiment demonstrated an influence in the number of turns on distance estimation. This result was confirmed in the last experiment with adults. If participants had no possibility to compare the routes in respect to their number of turns, both routes were estimated as equally long.