Abstract

Investigated factor contributing to cause an alignment effect. In our opinion, it could be explained by taking into account individual differences based on the subjective aptitude to focus only on selected environmental information. In this way different forms of environmental knowledge are acquired: "survey", "route" or "visual". We hypothesise that "route" and "visual" participants show an alignment effect but "survey" participants do not. Experiment 1: we used a questionnaire in order to distinguish the cognitive style used by adult participants (20 "survey", 19 "route" and 19 "visual") and a directional judgement task in order to show an alignment effect. The Anova showed an interesting trend: visual participants made many more mistakes than "route" and "survey" subjects. Experiment 2: we used cognitive tasks in order to better distinguish the cognitive style used by adult participants (14 "survey", 15 "route" and 15 "visual") and the same directional judgement task as in the experiment 1 in order to show an alignment effect. The Anova confirmed our hypothesis: "survey" participants do not show any alignment effect.