Spatial concepts and perception of physical and diagrammed scenes

The accessibility of objects in mental spatial frameworks depends on their relation to the spatial axes of the world and people's typical interactions with space. The current study investigated perception of space. Subjects viewed either a physical model of a person surrounded by objects (Exp. 1) or diagrams of scenes (Exp. 2). Subjects named objects at directions from their own external perspective. For physical scenes, subjects were faster to name objects at Above/Below locations, followed by Front/Behind locations, followed by Left/Right locations. This finding indicates that subjects used spatial frameworks to locate objects perceptually. For diagrams, response times to name objects did not conform to this pattern, perhaps because the spatial axes of a diagram do not correspond to stable spatial axes of the world.