Human Cognition in the
Geographic Domain
David M. Mark
Department of Geography, UB
Spatial Cognition
• Spatial cognition is a well established field
in cognitive psychology
• Topics include: Mental rotation; position
recall; maze tracing
• Landau & Jackendoff: “What and Where in
Language and Cognition”
– Different systems in the brain for handling
object categories (what) and spatial locations
(where)
Geography
• Geography is a discipline that studies the
Earth’s surface:
– What is where?
– Why are things where they are?
– Where will things be in the future?
– Where should they be?
• Is Geographic cognition different from
spatial cognition?
– Probably…
What is meant by “Geographic”?
• Class participation: what do you think?
• Not exactly a synonym for spatial
• Borderline cases
– iceberg, supertanker, tree, building, …
• Geographic: A subset of spatial,
mesoscopic reality, distances > 20 m
Is the "geographic domain" a
coherent subdomain of reality?
• How would we even start to answer that?
• Is the geographic domain cognitively
distinct?
• There is lots of evidence that geographic
space is dealt with differently than the
table-top world of manipulable objects,
although there must be a transition
between them
Granö
• Johannes Granö was a geographer in Finland, who wrote a
book called “Pure Geography” in the 1930s
• He claimed that the subject matter of Geography is, or should
be, the human perceptual environment
• He proposed that the human perceptual environment idea is
divided into two zones: the proximity and the landscape
• The proximity is a zone within about 20 meters (70 feet), that
is perceived as 3D and multisensory;
• The landscape is farther away, largely 2D (projected image)
and mainly visual
• Landscape in Granö's sense is close to what we call geographic
Major Topics in Geographic
Cognition Research
• Wayfinding and navigation
• Mental maps and knowledge of geographic
configurations
• Spatial Relations
• Spatial Reference Frames
• Human-computer Interaction for GIS
• Geographic Entities and their Categories
Wayfinding and
Navigation
• Landmarks; distance and direction
• Possible gender-related differences
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Other species (rats, pigeons, honeybees)
Giving directions
Vehicle navigation systems
Links to behavioral geography, trying to
understand choice of shops, homes
‘Mental Maps’ and
Knowledge of Geographic
Phenomena
Spatial Relations
• Geographic space is essentially 2-D
• Road-park experiments (see below)
• Inside, outside, enters, crosses
• perhaps two more, goes to and goes
along
• Why those 4 (or 6)
Numbers of ‘Different’
Spatial Relations
• The 9-intersection model defines
– 8 distinct spatial relations between two
regions
– 33 distinct spatial relations between two
unbranched lines
– 19 spatial relations between an
unbranched line and a region
8 relations between two regions
The 19 line-region relations
Spatial Reference Frames
• Several different types of Reference Frames
– Viewer/speaker centered (in front of the tree)
– Object centered (in front of the car)
– Absolute/geographic
• A significant minority of cultures and
languages use 'geographic' reference
frames indoors
• This does this mean that think about space
differently
Human-Computer
Interaction for GIS
• Are HCI issues different for the
geographic / GIS domain?
• Perhaps there are no unique
problems in the intersection
• The space-for-space problem might be
one?
Geographic Entities and
Their Categories
• A really different aspect of the
geographic domain is the
preponderance of landforms, features
(shape-based parts) of other things
• The only geographical detached
objects (JJ Gibson) are whole planets
"Do mountains exist?"
• The individuation or delimitation
problem
• The gradation problem
• The categories (eg., mountain vs.
hill)
Hills and Mountains
• Mountain:
1. a. A large natural elevation of the earth's
surface, esp. one high and steep in form (larger
and higher than a hill) (OED)
Hills and Mountains
• Hill:
1. a. A natural elevation of the earth's surface … after the
introduction of the word ‘mountain’ [into English], gradually
restricted to heights of less elevation; … (OED)
Hills and Mountains:
Not Simply a Matter of
Size!
• Hill: “a more rounded and less rugged outline is
also usually connoted by the name” (OED)
Hill
??
Mountain
“Finger Rock”
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•
•
•
•
#76
“Shiprock”
4
B
For features too
small to be ‘mountains’, yet too jagged to be ‘hills’,
Shiprock
area
English relies on other terms, such as rock, butte, peak, mesa, etc.…
buttes/ monoliths
“Mitten Buttes”
“Picacho Peak”
P9250035
Thank you for your attention!
For more information, see
http://www.geog.buffalo.edu/ncgia/ethnophysiography/
Email: dmark@buffalo.edu