[An analysis of individual differences in monitoring: information processing of acquiring the knowledge of space]

In order to examine the process of acquiring spatial knowledge, strategies to explore the space were investigated. Verbal protocol and sketch maps of 20 adults were collected while they were exploring unfamiliar environment. According to the degree of organization of sketch maps, the subjects were classified into the following two groups: High Organization Group (HO) and Low Organization Group (LO). The former group was farther divided into two subgroups by the accuracy of sketch maps with respect to two spatial characteristics (landmark and position): HOL and HOP. Contents of the verbal protocol were classified into seven groups according to monitoring items, and the number of utterances of each item were counted. HOL monitored the encoding items much more frequently than LO, while HOP monitored the encoding items as well as the items related to the inference and evaluation of results much more frequently than LO. These results suggest that the process of acquiring spatial knowledge is classified into two main types.