Journey to the End of the World Map – How Edges of World Maps Shape the Spatial Mind. GI_Forum|GI_Forum 2016, Volume 1 – open:spatial:interfaces|

World maps are among the most widely used geomedia products for visualizing global phenomena. Since there are, theoretically, infinite ways to portray Earth’s spherical surface on a plane, the question of the most appropriate world map design has been widely discussed in recent decades. However, this discussion has focused mainly on different projections, while another basic characteristic of any map, i.e. the presence of map edges, has been largely ignored so far. In view of this gap in cartographic research, this article examines empirically whether spatial relations are memorized differently by learners when these are presented on maps that have differently positioned edges. Distance estimations between locations learnt on Eurocentric and Americentric world maps are compared for this purpose. In line with previous spatial cognition research on barrier effects, our results indicate that distances are memorized more exactly when relevant inter-object relations are not being cut by map edges. Hence, designing an appropriate world map does not seem to be a problem purely of map projection; the position of the map’s edges shapes the knowledge that users may acquire when reading a map