Where Did You Say that State Was? The Effect of Availability on a Student's Knowledge of the United States

Individuals' mental maps of the world are highly misrepresentative of the actual world. Availability in memory partly explains the reasons for this misrepresentation. When asked to place the 50 states in their correct locations, students have difficulty with states not in close proximity to their own because of availability, such that the proportion of students from the Midwest correctly recalled Illinois and the states connected to Illinois significantly more than the proportion of students from the West. In addition, the proportion of students from the West correctly recalled Idaho and the states connected to Idaho significantly more than the proportion of students from the Midwest, with the exception of Nevada, on which the students did not differ.