Perceptualand Motor Skills, 1991, 7 3 , 583-590. O Perceptual and Motor Skills 1991
DESCRIBING SPORT GROUNDS: AN INVESTIGATION O F 'FUNCTIONAL' AND 'ACQUAINTANCE' FAMILIARITY' ERMINIELDA MAINARDI PERON, MARIA ROSA BARONI, AND SUSANNA FALCHERO University of Padova
Strmmory.-The present research was designed to investigate the concept of familiarity and how different kinds OF familiarity could affect the coding and memory of places having specific and strong functional significance, i.e., sport courts. Tennis and basketball were selected. Usen and nonusers of such sport courts had first to describe a sport court taking the necessary information from their stored schematic knowledge and then to describe a sport court previously seen in a photograph. Subjects' verbal reports showed a certain superiority of users' performance, a commonly found place effect, and the presence of errors only on the second task and mainly by the users group. The results are discussed in terms of the environmental schemata theory and of the different kinds of familiarity considered.
The present research was focussed on the concept of familiarity and on how different kinds of familiarity might affect the coding and memory of places in everyday life experience. Knowledge is here considered within the frame of the environmental schemata theory. Schemata are abstract representations of place knowledge hierarchically structured (see, for instance, Minsky, 1975; Mandler, 1979). We form a place schema through repeated exposures to various instances of places of the same kind, and, from a joint analysis of these, we come to define a series of notions about the kind of place in question which includes location, dimension, internal composition, function, possibilities for behavior, pleasantness, affective/emotional reactions, and so on. In addition, for each piece of information included in the schema also is a range of variations which might be more or less typical, compatible, or incompatible with respect to the environmental schema considered. Each time we encounter a place, we activate the schema we consider to be appropriate, we test the correctness of the activated schema by matching it with the place in question, and then we extract from the place new information which will be integrated or may modify the schema. It can then be argued that a well defined and precisely articulated schema will be the result of many encounters with various instances of that schema, this point clearly bearing on the familiarity concept. Gale, Golledge, Halperin, and Couclelis (1990) have given a definition of spatial familiarity which considers four dimensions of it, namely, locational knowledge (where a place is), visual recognition (ab~lityto recognize a 'Address correspondence to Dr. E. Mainardi Peron, Dipartimento di Psicologia Generale, Univenitii di Padova, Piazza Capitaniato 3, Padova, Italy.
584
E. MAINARDI PERON, ET AL.
place having seen it before), name recognition (knowledge of the name of the place), and interaction with the place. The present research was designed to specify the interaction component from the point of view of the subject's aims during contact with a place. In previous studies (Mainardi Peron, Baroni, Job, & Salmaso, 1985, 1990) the concept of familiarity has been analyzed, with attention in particular to the relations among contact, knowledge, and familiarity with the material. I t has been argued that a good knowledge of a certain kind of material does not always stem from repeated or long contact and that, with respect to environmental knowledge, two kinds of familiarity can be distinguished, namely, functional familiarity, which results from reachng one's goals through some activity occurring in the place, and acquaintance familiarity, which is based on repeated exposures to the place not particularly linked with a specific goal to be achieved there. Examples of acquaintance familiarity include passing through a route or an internal place to reach another place, while examples of functional familiarity include going to our office to work or relaxing in our living room. In addition to different kinds of familiarity, another issue which has not up to now received much attention is the effect of a fairly complete and very well learned schema on the description of a particular instance of that place schema. I n this case, just the fact of having an overlearned schema could interfere when one has to remember a specific place which, even if rather typical, must necessarily be somewhat different from the schema. The present research was then designed to investigate the effects on the description of episodically known places of very well established place schemata and also the effects of different kinds of familiarity. As these issues are clearly related to the functional aspects of the places considered, it was felt useful to choose environments which have a well defined and univocal function, as is the case for sport grounds. Two sport courts and two kinds of descriptions were considered. One description was based on the schematic knowledge of subjects who were either expert at that sport (functional familiarity) or nonexpert (acquaintance famiharity), while the other description consisted in describing a specific sport ground, presented in a photograph. By comparing the descriptions given by the two groups of subjects on these tasks, one might detect the effects of a strongly established schema on the description of a single instance of that schema. Material A preliminary study was conducted in order to select two sports which could be considered more or less equally common and so known also to the nonusers, but these should differ in complexity of the sport court on the assumption that this complexity might be of relevance to the subjects' per-
FUNCTIONAL AND ACQUAINTANCE FAMILIARITY
585
formance. This investigation required interviews of 30 undergraduate students who were requested to list the sports they knew at least partially and to indicate the complexity of their grounds or courts. The analysis of their responses indicated-that tennis had-a rather simple sport court, that is, it had components with only small internal variability, while basketball was considered to have a more complex court in the sense that, being a sport generally played indoors, it requires a more furnished ground, and several items are more articulated internally and can also display greater variability. Having thus defined the two sports to be tested, for each one a wide series of colored photographs of playing fields containing neither players nor public were taken. For each sport, the 20- x 30-cm photographs were submitted to a group of 30 independent judges, 15 of whom were players of the sport in question. They had to judge on a seven-point scale from 1: not at all typical to 7: extremely typical, how much they considered each of them to be a "typical, usual, common" playing court for that sport. The two photographs selected had a medium ratio of typicality of 5.63 for the tennis court and 4.93 for the basketball court. A Student t test for independent data carried out on these data showed no significant difference in rated evaluation between the two photographs. Subjects Subjects were 60 male undergraduate students of the two Italian Universities of Padova and Torino. For each of the two sports considered (tennis and basketball) two homogeneous groups of 15 subjects each were formed: a group of users, that is, persons who had been constantly practising that sport lor at least the last three years, and a group of nonusers, that is, persons who knew the sport in question from having watched it occasionally (i.e., no more than twice a month during at least the last three years) either on television or on the ground, but who had never practised. The four resulting groups of subjects were named Tennis Users Group, Tennis Nonusers Group, Basketball Users Group, and Basketball Nonusers Group. Procedure Each subject in the four groups was individually tested twice, the procedure being the same for user and nonuser groups of the same sport. In the first phase of the experiment, subjects were asked to describe in as much detail as possible a tennis court (or a basketball court) when ready for a game but with no person present. The instructions stressed that the description was intended for a person not familiar with such a sport court, so the speaker was asked to be particularly clear and not to take anything for granted in his description. This description is hereafter referred to as a schematic description. This task is, in fact, aimed at testing subjects' schematic knowledge of the environment, as it is only from such stored information that they can organize their descriptions.
586
E. MAINAKDI PERON, ETAL.
In the second phase of the experiment, which occurred a month later, these subjects were presented the photograph of the tennis court (or of the basketball court) and were requested to examine it carefully for 10 seconds because later their memory would be tested. It should be stressed that the photographed courts were not previously known to the subjects. After viewing the photograph, each subject was given three interfering tasks for about five minutes and then asked to describe the court he had seen in the photograph; the instructions closely followed those given for the first task, i.e., to describe the place for a person not familiar with it. This description is hereafter referred to as an episodic description. Subjects' verbal reports were recorded and later transcribed. Analyses of Data As in previous research (Axia, Baroni, & Mainardi Peron, 1988; Mainardi Peron, et al., 1985, 1990), it was felt necessary to consider not only the number of correctly mentioned items but also other aspects of subjects' reporting which could better enhghten the quahty of the given description. That is why the following four indices-already used in the above mentioned research-were considered: proportion of correctly mentioned items, proportion of locatives, proportion of qualifiers, and errors.. Proportion of correctly mentioned items.-For each sport, each subject had two scores relating to the proportion of correctly mentioned items, one for the schematic description and one for the episodic description, which corresponded to the ratio obtained by dividing the number of items given by himself by the total number of items correctly mentioned by users and nonusers of that sport. The items counted in the schematic description task for the tennis court were court (shape, material, color, etc.), b d s and ball boxes, benches for players and captains, board (scoreboard, clock), court covers, lighting, lines, maintenance equipment (rollers, sweepers, hoses), electronic devices (microphones, loudspeakers), net, publicity (placards, banners, posters), rackets, sawdust or chalk box, stands (for the public), and umpire's chair (seats for linesmen). The items counted in the schematic description task for the basketball court were balls and ball boxes, baskets, benches for players and coaches, board (scoreboard, timer, etc.), court (shape, material, color, etc.), entranceslexits for players and officials, exits and emergency exits, fire extinguishers, lighting, lines, loudspeakers, maintenance equipment (brooms, cloths, etc.), officials' table, ~ublicity(placards, banners, posters), and stands (for the ~ublic). The items listed in the episodic description task for the tennis court were background, balls and ball box, boundary railing, court (shape, material, color, etc.), enclosures (on the right of the photo), hose, lighting, lines, net, publicity, and umpire's chair. The items for the basketball court were balls and ball box, basket, board (scoreboard, timer, etc.), clock, court (shape, ma-
FUNCTIONAL AND ACQUAINTANCE FAMILIARITY
587
terial, color, etc.), green doors at the far end of the court, large glass windows, lighting, lines, pieces of equipment leaning against the wall, pile of wooden boards, side exits for players and door protection, stands and barriers, umpire's chair, ventilation shafts, walls, wooden table, and W.C. notice (rest rooms). Proportion of locatives.-This index was separately scored for each sport and each task, computing for each subject the ratio between the number of items he had given with at least one locative and the total number of items he had correctly mentioned. A locative was considered to be any specification of the location of an item. An example of the use of locatives for the tennis court is "La sedia del giudice di gara t posta ad un'estremith della rete (The judge chair is located a t one end of the net)." An example o f the use of locatives for the basketball court is "Al centro del campo c'e un cerchio (In the center of the playing court there is a circle)." Proportion of qualifiers.-This index was scored similarly to the proportion of locatives, that is, through separate scoring for each sport and each task, computing for each subject the ratio between the number of items he had given with at least one qualifier and the total number of items he had correctly mentioned. A qualifier was considered to be any specification referring to an item, like color, material, size, and so on. An example of the use of quahfiers for the tennis court is "L1 campo 6 in terra rossa (The playing court is of red earth)." An example of the use of qualifiers for the basketball court is "Una rete abbastanza alta separa i posti per il pubblico dal terreno di gjoco (A fairly tall netting separates the seats for the public from the playing ground)," Errors.-Errors were considered either a wrong description of an item or mentioning an item which was not present in the photograph. The wrong description could refer to color, position, size, material, number, and so on. The number of subjects making at least one error for each group and each sport was compu ted . Dara relating to the first three indices (proportion of correctly mentioned items, proportion of locatives, and proportion of qualifiers) were submitted to a multivariate analysis of variance with two between-subjects factors: lace (tennis court vs basketball court) and familiarity (users vs nonusers), and one dependent variable: task, at six levels (Tal = proportion of correctly mentioned items in the schematic description; Ta2 = proportion of locatives in the schematic description; Ta3 = proportion of qualifiers in the schematic description; T b l = proportion of correctly mentioned items in the episodic description; Tb2 = proportion of locatives in the episodic description; Tb3 = proportion of qualifiers in the episodic description). The rejection region was set at p = .05. For each group, in Table 1, are reported the
E. MAINARDI PERON, E T A L .
TABLE
1
MEANPROPORTIONS OF I T F ~ S LOCATIVES, , AND QUALEERS MENTIONED BY USERS AND NONUSERS IN THE SCHEMATIC DESCRIPT~ON AND IN THE EPISODIC DESCRIPTION OF A TENNIS COURTAND OF A BASKETBALL COURT Place
Mean Proportions of Items Tennis Court
Descriptive Task Schematic
Episohc Basketball Court Mean Proportions of Locatives Tennis Court
Basketball Court
Schematic Episodic Schematic
Episodic Schematic Episodic
Users
Familiarity Nonusers
.42 .66 .46 .44
.39 .64 .31 .33
.41 .28 .47 .36
.44 .34 .42 .26
.60 .48 .66 .47
.68
Mean Proportions of Qualifiers Tennis Court
Schematic
Episodic Basketball Court
Schematic Episodic
.55 .68 .62
mean -proportions of correctly mentioned items, the mean proportions of locatives, and the mean proportions of qualifiers. The sources of variability reaching significance were place (F,,,, = 60.46), only in T b l condition, more items being mentioned for the tennis court, and familiarity (F,,,, = 4.60) only in the Tal condition, users mentioning more items than nonusers. Contrasts were utilized to test specific hypotheses about differences between each of the three kinds of scores in the schematic description and in the episodic description. The only significant source of variability was the proportion of correctly mentioned items: place (F,,,, = 42.08) for the tennis court more items being mentioned in the episodic description than in the schematic description. Neither familiarity nor the interaction of familiarity per place was significant. A further analysis was conducted of errors, which were surprisingly observed only in the episodic description and not in the schematic descriptive task, although these latter descriptions were rather detailed. This unexpected datum can be explained arguing that, when having to describe an environment without reference to a specific instance of it, subjects avoid mentioning aspects or details of which they are not sure. In Table 2 the number of subjects in each group making errors is reported. A chi-squared test was applied to the data on the episodic description task for the four groups of subjects (n = 60). Analysis showed a significant difference at p < .05. The number of subjects making errors in the Basketball Users Group was significantly higher than that observed in the three other groups, who did not differ from each other (X,2 = 9.44). -
589
FUNCTIONAL AND ACQUAINTANCE FAMILIARITY TABLE 2
NUMBEROF USERS AND NONUSERS MAKING ERRORS IN THEIREPISODIC DESC~ON OF A
TENNIS COURT AND OF A BASKETBALL COURT
Place
Familiarity
Nonusers
Users
Tennis Court
Basketball Court
n
Total Errors
n
Total Errors
3 11
3
4
17
5
5 7
A first result which emerges from the above-described analyses is the presence of a place effect. similar data have been observed in iany of our previous studies, but the fact that real places can differ from each other is such an obvious point that it possibly does not deserve further discussion. As expected, results also show a significant difference between users and nonusers, although users' superiority is not as complete as it was hypothesized. I n fact, it could be argued that a better performance should consist in giving a larger number of items, a wider range of qualifiers, a certain number of locatives, and no errors at all. As for locatives, we said "a certain number" because it should be kept in mind that this index is affected more than others by the characteristics of the specific place considered, as it can make no sense to indicate the location of certain items (either because the location is obvious or because such items have no fixed location). With respect to the above-listed expectations, users' performance was in fact superior to that of nonusers, but only for the correctly mentioned items in the schematic description task while, for qualifiers and for locatives, no difference was observed. As for the errors registered in the episodic description, the fact that more users than nonusers made errors shows a certain negative effect of a well established schema, although here limited to basketball. I n our opinion, this can be tentatively interpreted in the light of the alleged difference between the tennis court schema and the basketball court schema. As we have seen above, the former is judged to be more simple, while the latter is considered to be more articulated, more complex. This aspect could account for the observed difference in errors, in the sense of hypothesizing that a very well learned schema interferes negatively with memory of a specific instance of that schema only when the schema in question is a rather articulated one. Some evidence supporting this tentative interpretation has been found considering, for the schematic description of each sport, the total number of different qualifiers given by subjects, as this datum can be considered to be a criterion for the internal variability of the environmental items. Analysis of protocols showed that subjects gave 67 different qualifiers for the tennis court items and 106 different qualifiers for the basketball court items. I t should, however, be remembered that, as only two sport courts have been
590
E. MAINARDI PERON, E T AL.
investigated, before accepti.ng the above interpretation further research is needed Globally considered, the results here obtained indicate some effects of the different kinds of familiarity with a place on its yerbal description-even if such effects are somehow less dramatic than expected. Contrary to what had been observed in previous research (Axja, et al., 1988; Mainardi Peron, et'al., 1985), in this case, the importance of other indices such as those considered here was not confirmed. In fact, no difference was observed in the use of locatives and qualifiers throughout the experimental conditions. The general conclusion is that this research further confirms the irnportance of distinguishing, within the concept of familiarity, an acquaintance from a fuilctional familiarity. In addition, the present work suggests how the effects of these different kinds of familiarity could vary according to some characteristics of the environmental schema considered. This last point, however, deserves further investigation. AXW, G . , BAROHI,M. R.,
&
REFERENCES MAWARDI PERON,E . (1988) Representation of familiar places in
children and adults: verbal reports as a method of studying environmental knowledge. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 8 , 123-139. GALE,N., GOLLEDGE, R. G., I-IALPERIN, W. C., & COUCLELIS, H. (1990) Exploring spatial familiarity. The Professional Geographer, 42, 229-313. MAINARDI PERON,E., BARONI,M. R., JOB, R., & SALMASO, P (1985) Cognitive factors and commonicative strategies in recalling unfamiliar places. Jorrrnal of Environmental Psychology, 5 , 325-333. MAINARDI PERON,E., BARONI,M. R., JOB, R., & SUASO, P. (1990) Effects of familiarity i n recalling interiors and rxrernal places. ]orrrnaI o j Environmental Psychology, 10, 255-271. c a l schematic organization in memory. I n C. R. Puff MANDLER,. M. (1979) C a ~ r g o ~ ~ and (Ed!), Memory orgonirvrion ond snuchrre. New York: Academic Press. Pp. 303-319. MINSKY,M. (1975) A framework for representing knowledge. In P. H. Winston (Ed.), The psychology ofcomputer vision. New York: McGraw-Hill Pp. 211-277.
Accepted September 11, 1391.
DESCRIBING SPORT GROUNDS: AN INVESTIGATION O F 'FUNCTIONAL' AND 'ACQUAINTANCE' FAMILIARITY' ERMINIELDA MAINARDI PERON, MARIA ROSA BARONI, AND SUSANNA FALCHERO University of Padova
Strmmory.-The present research was designed to investigate the concept of familiarity and how different kinds OF familiarity could affect the coding and memory of places having specific and strong functional significance, i.e., sport courts. Tennis and basketball were selected. Usen and nonusers of such sport courts had first to describe a sport court taking the necessary information from their stored schematic knowledge and then to describe a sport court previously seen in a photograph. Subjects' verbal reports showed a certain superiority of users' performance, a commonly found place effect, and the presence of errors only on the second task and mainly by the users group. The results are discussed in terms of the environmental schemata theory and of the different kinds of familiarity considered.
The present research was focussed on the concept of familiarity and on how different kinds of familiarity might affect the coding and memory of places in everyday life experience. Knowledge is here considered within the frame of the environmental schemata theory. Schemata are abstract representations of place knowledge hierarchically structured (see, for instance, Minsky, 1975; Mandler, 1979). We form a place schema through repeated exposures to various instances of places of the same kind, and, from a joint analysis of these, we come to define a series of notions about the kind of place in question which includes location, dimension, internal composition, function, possibilities for behavior, pleasantness, affective/emotional reactions, and so on. In addition, for each piece of information included in the schema also is a range of variations which might be more or less typical, compatible, or incompatible with respect to the environmental schema considered. Each time we encounter a place, we activate the schema we consider to be appropriate, we test the correctness of the activated schema by matching it with the place in question, and then we extract from the place new information which will be integrated or may modify the schema. It can then be argued that a well defined and precisely articulated schema will be the result of many encounters with various instances of that schema, this point clearly bearing on the familiarity concept. Gale, Golledge, Halperin, and Couclelis (1990) have given a definition of spatial familiarity which considers four dimensions of it, namely, locational knowledge (where a place is), visual recognition (ab~lityto recognize a 'Address correspondence to Dr. E. Mainardi Peron, Dipartimento di Psicologia Generale, Univenitii di Padova, Piazza Capitaniato 3, Padova, Italy.
584
E. MAINARDI PERON, ET AL.
place having seen it before), name recognition (knowledge of the name of the place), and interaction with the place. The present research was designed to specify the interaction component from the point of view of the subject's aims during contact with a place. In previous studies (Mainardi Peron, Baroni, Job, & Salmaso, 1985, 1990) the concept of familiarity has been analyzed, with attention in particular to the relations among contact, knowledge, and familiarity with the material. I t has been argued that a good knowledge of a certain kind of material does not always stem from repeated or long contact and that, with respect to environmental knowledge, two kinds of familiarity can be distinguished, namely, functional familiarity, which results from reachng one's goals through some activity occurring in the place, and acquaintance familiarity, which is based on repeated exposures to the place not particularly linked with a specific goal to be achieved there. Examples of acquaintance familiarity include passing through a route or an internal place to reach another place, while examples of functional familiarity include going to our office to work or relaxing in our living room. In addition to different kinds of familiarity, another issue which has not up to now received much attention is the effect of a fairly complete and very well learned schema on the description of a particular instance of that place schema. I n this case, just the fact of having an overlearned schema could interfere when one has to remember a specific place which, even if rather typical, must necessarily be somewhat different from the schema. The present research was then designed to investigate the effects on the description of episodically known places of very well established place schemata and also the effects of different kinds of familiarity. As these issues are clearly related to the functional aspects of the places considered, it was felt useful to choose environments which have a well defined and univocal function, as is the case for sport grounds. Two sport courts and two kinds of descriptions were considered. One description was based on the schematic knowledge of subjects who were either expert at that sport (functional familiarity) or nonexpert (acquaintance famiharity), while the other description consisted in describing a specific sport ground, presented in a photograph. By comparing the descriptions given by the two groups of subjects on these tasks, one might detect the effects of a strongly established schema on the description of a single instance of that schema. Material A preliminary study was conducted in order to select two sports which could be considered more or less equally common and so known also to the nonusers, but these should differ in complexity of the sport court on the assumption that this complexity might be of relevance to the subjects' per-
FUNCTIONAL AND ACQUAINTANCE FAMILIARITY
585
formance. This investigation required interviews of 30 undergraduate students who were requested to list the sports they knew at least partially and to indicate the complexity of their grounds or courts. The analysis of their responses indicated-that tennis had-a rather simple sport court, that is, it had components with only small internal variability, while basketball was considered to have a more complex court in the sense that, being a sport generally played indoors, it requires a more furnished ground, and several items are more articulated internally and can also display greater variability. Having thus defined the two sports to be tested, for each one a wide series of colored photographs of playing fields containing neither players nor public were taken. For each sport, the 20- x 30-cm photographs were submitted to a group of 30 independent judges, 15 of whom were players of the sport in question. They had to judge on a seven-point scale from 1: not at all typical to 7: extremely typical, how much they considered each of them to be a "typical, usual, common" playing court for that sport. The two photographs selected had a medium ratio of typicality of 5.63 for the tennis court and 4.93 for the basketball court. A Student t test for independent data carried out on these data showed no significant difference in rated evaluation between the two photographs. Subjects Subjects were 60 male undergraduate students of the two Italian Universities of Padova and Torino. For each of the two sports considered (tennis and basketball) two homogeneous groups of 15 subjects each were formed: a group of users, that is, persons who had been constantly practising that sport lor at least the last three years, and a group of nonusers, that is, persons who knew the sport in question from having watched it occasionally (i.e., no more than twice a month during at least the last three years) either on television or on the ground, but who had never practised. The four resulting groups of subjects were named Tennis Users Group, Tennis Nonusers Group, Basketball Users Group, and Basketball Nonusers Group. Procedure Each subject in the four groups was individually tested twice, the procedure being the same for user and nonuser groups of the same sport. In the first phase of the experiment, subjects were asked to describe in as much detail as possible a tennis court (or a basketball court) when ready for a game but with no person present. The instructions stressed that the description was intended for a person not familiar with such a sport court, so the speaker was asked to be particularly clear and not to take anything for granted in his description. This description is hereafter referred to as a schematic description. This task is, in fact, aimed at testing subjects' schematic knowledge of the environment, as it is only from such stored information that they can organize their descriptions.
586
E. MAINAKDI PERON, ETAL.
In the second phase of the experiment, which occurred a month later, these subjects were presented the photograph of the tennis court (or of the basketball court) and were requested to examine it carefully for 10 seconds because later their memory would be tested. It should be stressed that the photographed courts were not previously known to the subjects. After viewing the photograph, each subject was given three interfering tasks for about five minutes and then asked to describe the court he had seen in the photograph; the instructions closely followed those given for the first task, i.e., to describe the place for a person not familiar with it. This description is hereafter referred to as an episodic description. Subjects' verbal reports were recorded and later transcribed. Analyses of Data As in previous research (Axia, Baroni, & Mainardi Peron, 1988; Mainardi Peron, et al., 1985, 1990), it was felt necessary to consider not only the number of correctly mentioned items but also other aspects of subjects' reporting which could better enhghten the quahty of the given description. That is why the following four indices-already used in the above mentioned research-were considered: proportion of correctly mentioned items, proportion of locatives, proportion of qualifiers, and errors.. Proportion of correctly mentioned items.-For each sport, each subject had two scores relating to the proportion of correctly mentioned items, one for the schematic description and one for the episodic description, which corresponded to the ratio obtained by dividing the number of items given by himself by the total number of items correctly mentioned by users and nonusers of that sport. The items counted in the schematic description task for the tennis court were court (shape, material, color, etc.), b d s and ball boxes, benches for players and captains, board (scoreboard, clock), court covers, lighting, lines, maintenance equipment (rollers, sweepers, hoses), electronic devices (microphones, loudspeakers), net, publicity (placards, banners, posters), rackets, sawdust or chalk box, stands (for the public), and umpire's chair (seats for linesmen). The items counted in the schematic description task for the basketball court were balls and ball boxes, baskets, benches for players and coaches, board (scoreboard, timer, etc.), court (shape, material, color, etc.), entranceslexits for players and officials, exits and emergency exits, fire extinguishers, lighting, lines, loudspeakers, maintenance equipment (brooms, cloths, etc.), officials' table, ~ublicity(placards, banners, posters), and stands (for the ~ublic). The items listed in the episodic description task for the tennis court were background, balls and ball box, boundary railing, court (shape, material, color, etc.), enclosures (on the right of the photo), hose, lighting, lines, net, publicity, and umpire's chair. The items for the basketball court were balls and ball box, basket, board (scoreboard, timer, etc.), clock, court (shape, ma-
FUNCTIONAL AND ACQUAINTANCE FAMILIARITY
587
terial, color, etc.), green doors at the far end of the court, large glass windows, lighting, lines, pieces of equipment leaning against the wall, pile of wooden boards, side exits for players and door protection, stands and barriers, umpire's chair, ventilation shafts, walls, wooden table, and W.C. notice (rest rooms). Proportion of locatives.-This index was separately scored for each sport and each task, computing for each subject the ratio between the number of items he had given with at least one locative and the total number of items he had correctly mentioned. A locative was considered to be any specification of the location of an item. An example of the use of locatives for the tennis court is "La sedia del giudice di gara t posta ad un'estremith della rete (The judge chair is located a t one end of the net)." An example o f the use of locatives for the basketball court is "Al centro del campo c'e un cerchio (In the center of the playing court there is a circle)." Proportion of qualifiers.-This index was scored similarly to the proportion of locatives, that is, through separate scoring for each sport and each task, computing for each subject the ratio between the number of items he had given with at least one qualifier and the total number of items he had correctly mentioned. A qualifier was considered to be any specification referring to an item, like color, material, size, and so on. An example of the use of quahfiers for the tennis court is "L1 campo 6 in terra rossa (The playing court is of red earth)." An example of the use of qualifiers for the basketball court is "Una rete abbastanza alta separa i posti per il pubblico dal terreno di gjoco (A fairly tall netting separates the seats for the public from the playing ground)," Errors.-Errors were considered either a wrong description of an item or mentioning an item which was not present in the photograph. The wrong description could refer to color, position, size, material, number, and so on. The number of subjects making at least one error for each group and each sport was compu ted . Dara relating to the first three indices (proportion of correctly mentioned items, proportion of locatives, and proportion of qualifiers) were submitted to a multivariate analysis of variance with two between-subjects factors: lace (tennis court vs basketball court) and familiarity (users vs nonusers), and one dependent variable: task, at six levels (Tal = proportion of correctly mentioned items in the schematic description; Ta2 = proportion of locatives in the schematic description; Ta3 = proportion of qualifiers in the schematic description; T b l = proportion of correctly mentioned items in the episodic description; Tb2 = proportion of locatives in the episodic description; Tb3 = proportion of qualifiers in the episodic description). The rejection region was set at p = .05. For each group, in Table 1, are reported the
E. MAINARDI PERON, E T A L .
TABLE
1
MEANPROPORTIONS OF I T F ~ S LOCATIVES, , AND QUALEERS MENTIONED BY USERS AND NONUSERS IN THE SCHEMATIC DESCRIPT~ON AND IN THE EPISODIC DESCRIPTION OF A TENNIS COURTAND OF A BASKETBALL COURT Place
Mean Proportions of Items Tennis Court
Descriptive Task Schematic
Episohc Basketball Court Mean Proportions of Locatives Tennis Court
Basketball Court
Schematic Episodic Schematic
Episodic Schematic Episodic
Users
Familiarity Nonusers
.42 .66 .46 .44
.39 .64 .31 .33
.41 .28 .47 .36
.44 .34 .42 .26
.60 .48 .66 .47
.68
Mean Proportions of Qualifiers Tennis Court
Schematic
Episodic Basketball Court
Schematic Episodic
.55 .68 .62
mean -proportions of correctly mentioned items, the mean proportions of locatives, and the mean proportions of qualifiers. The sources of variability reaching significance were place (F,,,, = 60.46), only in T b l condition, more items being mentioned for the tennis court, and familiarity (F,,,, = 4.60) only in the Tal condition, users mentioning more items than nonusers. Contrasts were utilized to test specific hypotheses about differences between each of the three kinds of scores in the schematic description and in the episodic description. The only significant source of variability was the proportion of correctly mentioned items: place (F,,,, = 42.08) for the tennis court more items being mentioned in the episodic description than in the schematic description. Neither familiarity nor the interaction of familiarity per place was significant. A further analysis was conducted of errors, which were surprisingly observed only in the episodic description and not in the schematic descriptive task, although these latter descriptions were rather detailed. This unexpected datum can be explained arguing that, when having to describe an environment without reference to a specific instance of it, subjects avoid mentioning aspects or details of which they are not sure. In Table 2 the number of subjects in each group making errors is reported. A chi-squared test was applied to the data on the episodic description task for the four groups of subjects (n = 60). Analysis showed a significant difference at p < .05. The number of subjects making errors in the Basketball Users Group was significantly higher than that observed in the three other groups, who did not differ from each other (X,2 = 9.44). -
589
FUNCTIONAL AND ACQUAINTANCE FAMILIARITY TABLE 2
NUMBEROF USERS AND NONUSERS MAKING ERRORS IN THEIREPISODIC DESC~ON OF A
TENNIS COURT AND OF A BASKETBALL COURT
Place
Familiarity
Nonusers
Users
Tennis Court
Basketball Court
n
Total Errors
n
Total Errors
3 11
3
4
17
5
5 7
A first result which emerges from the above-described analyses is the presence of a place effect. similar data have been observed in iany of our previous studies, but the fact that real places can differ from each other is such an obvious point that it possibly does not deserve further discussion. As expected, results also show a significant difference between users and nonusers, although users' superiority is not as complete as it was hypothesized. I n fact, it could be argued that a better performance should consist in giving a larger number of items, a wider range of qualifiers, a certain number of locatives, and no errors at all. As for locatives, we said "a certain number" because it should be kept in mind that this index is affected more than others by the characteristics of the specific place considered, as it can make no sense to indicate the location of certain items (either because the location is obvious or because such items have no fixed location). With respect to the above-listed expectations, users' performance was in fact superior to that of nonusers, but only for the correctly mentioned items in the schematic description task while, for qualifiers and for locatives, no difference was observed. As for the errors registered in the episodic description, the fact that more users than nonusers made errors shows a certain negative effect of a well established schema, although here limited to basketball. I n our opinion, this can be tentatively interpreted in the light of the alleged difference between the tennis court schema and the basketball court schema. As we have seen above, the former is judged to be more simple, while the latter is considered to be more articulated, more complex. This aspect could account for the observed difference in errors, in the sense of hypothesizing that a very well learned schema interferes negatively with memory of a specific instance of that schema only when the schema in question is a rather articulated one. Some evidence supporting this tentative interpretation has been found considering, for the schematic description of each sport, the total number of different qualifiers given by subjects, as this datum can be considered to be a criterion for the internal variability of the environmental items. Analysis of protocols showed that subjects gave 67 different qualifiers for the tennis court items and 106 different qualifiers for the basketball court items. I t should, however, be remembered that, as only two sport courts have been
590
E. MAINARDI PERON, E T AL.
investigated, before accepti.ng the above interpretation further research is needed Globally considered, the results here obtained indicate some effects of the different kinds of familiarity with a place on its yerbal description-even if such effects are somehow less dramatic than expected. Contrary to what had been observed in previous research (Axja, et al., 1988; Mainardi Peron, et'al., 1985), in this case, the importance of other indices such as those considered here was not confirmed. In fact, no difference was observed in the use of locatives and qualifiers throughout the experimental conditions. The general conclusion is that this research further confirms the irnportance of distinguishing, within the concept of familiarity, an acquaintance from a fuilctional familiarity. In addition, the present work suggests how the effects of these different kinds of familiarity could vary according to some characteristics of the environmental schema considered. This last point, however, deserves further investigation. AXW, G . , BAROHI,M. R.,
&
REFERENCES MAWARDI PERON,E . (1988) Representation of familiar places in
children and adults: verbal reports as a method of studying environmental knowledge. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 8 , 123-139. GALE,N., GOLLEDGE, R. G., I-IALPERIN, W. C., & COUCLELIS, H. (1990) Exploring spatial familiarity. The Professional Geographer, 42, 229-313. MAINARDI PERON,E., BARONI,M. R., JOB, R., & SALMASO, P (1985) Cognitive factors and commonicative strategies in recalling unfamiliar places. Jorrrnal of Environmental Psychology, 5 , 325-333. MAINARDI PERON,E., BARONI,M. R., JOB, R., & SUASO, P. (1990) Effects of familiarity i n recalling interiors and rxrernal places. ]orrrnaI o j Environmental Psychology, 10, 255-271. c a l schematic organization in memory. I n C. R. Puff MANDLER,. M. (1979) C a ~ r g o ~ ~ and (Ed!), Memory orgonirvrion ond snuchrre. New York: Academic Press. Pp. 303-319. MINSKY,M. (1975) A framework for representing knowledge. In P. H. Winston (Ed.), The psychology ofcomputer vision. New York: McGraw-Hill Pp. 211-277.
Accepted September 11, 1391.
