Adoption of an internal viewpoint following presentations of plan-view diagrams and maps

This study investigated people's ability to adopt novel imagined viewpoints after studying plan-view diagrams and maps. In two experiments, university students were presented with a plan-view diagram of a character surrounded by nearby objects (Expt 1) or a character within a map of a multi-level shopping centre (Expt 2). Subsequently, participants'spatial knowledge of the diagrams/maps was tested by asking them about the location of six salient objects/places. In both experiments, the analyses of participants' spatial judgments suggested that they had adopted an imagined viewpoint internal to the character. The findings add to our understanding of imagined viewpoint switches along the vertical axis of space.