Distance cognition by taxi drivers and the general public

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Distance cognition by taxi drivers and the general public

Peruch, Patrick / Giraudo, Marie-Dominique / Garling, Tommy

Abstract Twenty-four taxi drivers and an equal number of non-professional or full-time drivers who had been residents of Paris for at least 10 years were requested to estimate straight-line and travel distances, in either distance or time units, between pairs of familiar locations in the city. The results showed that travel distances were invariably estimated as longer than straight-line distances, indicating that the subjects used the knowledge they had acquired of routes. Furthermore, taxi drivers did not make fewer systematic errors than the general public in estimating straight-line distances but they did estimate travel distances as shorter. In support of the view that taxi drivers differ from the general public primarily in procedural knowledge (e.g. of how to drive from A to B) rather than in declarative knowledge (of the straight-line distance between A and B), this finding was interpreted as showing that taxi drivers knew short-cuts to a greater extent than the general public.