Preferences for ascending and descending hierarchical organization in spatial communication

People prefer to order spatial information in a hierarchy of decreasing size of spatial unit when giving directions for finding objects and in a hierarchy of increasing size of spatial unit when providing descriptions of object locations (Plumert, Carswell, DeVet, & Ihrig, 1995). In five experiments, we examined whether people have a preference for ascending or descending organization when the task does not involve conveying spatial information to others. In Experiments 1-3, people learned the locations of objects in a model house and then verified statements describing those locations. People verified statements faster when spatial units were organized in an ascending (i.e., small to large) than in a descending (i.e., large to small) or random order. In Experiment 4, people first performed a sentence verification task and afterward wrote down directions for finding the objects. People again exhibited a preference for ascending organization in the verification task but exhibited a preference for descending organization when giving directions for finding the same objects. Experiment 5 demonstrated that the ascending advantage was not due to the link between the object and small landmark. Discussion focuses on the role of pragmatics and memory retrieval in preferences for ascending versus descending hierarchical organization.