Environmental Psychology 4
Cognitive Maps: the mental representation of the environment
Definition of "Cognitive Map"
Cognition of environmental structure plus other properties
(e.g. subjective meaning of places)
But: gives false impression of our spatial knowledge as
'maplike', which may not be the case.
So, other terms like 'mental spatial representation' have
been suggested.
Need to bear in mind that 'cognitive mapping' generally
used as "an umbrella term under which to group a
selection of research into people's spatial, geographical
and environmental knowledge" Kitchin & Blades (2002)
Microgenesis and Structure of Cognitive
Maps
Microgenesis
Development of representation of space over a relatively
short period of time (e.g. getting to know a new area)
Siegal & White (1975)
account based on Piaget's developmental theory.
Adults who learn a new environment construct their
representations over four stages:
Landmarks
- landmarks initially identified and remembered due to
particular role in the context of interactions with
environment; 'recognition-in-context-memory'.
Routes
- landmarks linked into routes, which are sensorimotor
routines linking landmarks in a stimulus-response chain
Minimaps
- individual routes become 'metricized': we gradually
represent the distances and directions between locations
on a route
Survey Knowledge
- co-ordination of routes and minimaps into fully metric
survey-like representation
There is some evidence that increasing knowledge of an
area starts with recognition of landmarks, which become
integrated into routes, which then become integrated into
survey representations (mostly with children).
Criticisms of the Idea of 'Cognitive Maps'
Problem with taking 'map in the head' metaphor too literally
- do we really consult a mental map when we move
through the environment?.
Information Processing Account
Carreiras (1986): 'the theory that a Euclidean geometry
underlies the spatial representation of the relations
between all locations is untenable'. IP account better.
Some principles of IP account:
Cognitive Economy: information organized hierarchically,
schematically, at different levels of abstraction and in
different modes of representation so as to maximize the
power of spatial thought while making most efficient use of
limited working memory capacity.
States of Partial Knowledge: we inevitably have gaps in
our knowledge of the environment, or make false
assumptions about it's structure.
Heuristics: in order to make processing more efficient,
several 'rough and ready' rules are built into processing
http://www.surrey.ac.uk/~pss1su/lecturenotes/
which generally result in appropriate decisions and
behaviour, but may sometimes lead to systematic errors.
According to IP, any account of mental spatial
representation must take these principles into account: a
complete, metrically co-ordinated representation would not
make computational sense for an organism which needs to
make fast and relatively reliable spatial decisions on the
basis of fragmentary knowledge.
Systematic Distortions
Alignment and Canonical Axes
Tversky (1981)
- errors of 'alignment' : places in the cognitive
representation tend to gravitate into relative alignment
with vertical and horizontal lines (e.g. North and South
America; North America and Europe).
- errors of 'rotation': individual structures tend to be rotated
so that natural axes are aligned vertically and horizontally
(e.g. South America; Britain).
- same tendency for:
• artificial maps
• meaningless blobs
Simplification
- curves often remembered as straight(er)
- complex angles of intersection gravitate towards
perpendicular (90)
- regions remembered as more symmetric (e.g. as a
rectangle or oval)
Hierarchical Organization and Cognitive Reference Points
- direction judgements faster across regions than within
- distance estimates smaller within regions than across
(when actual distance held constant)
- distance estimates from minor to major nodes
(landmarks) smaller than vice-versa
Stevens & Coupe (1978)
- undergraduate students at San Diego, California, tended
to estimate direction from their city Reno, Nevada, as
north-east.
- actual direction is north-north-west.
estimates biased by fact that Nevada is east of California
Hierarchy effects also apply to directly perceived spaces:
McNamara (1986)
- participants learned layout of objects in room divided
into four sections by barriers.
-> tended to underestimate distances within quadrants but
overestimate distances between quadrants (across
barriers).
- barriers had distorting effect on resulting mental
representation, by 'pushing apart' objects on each side
- effect also found with no barriers present.
Multiple Reference Systems claim that we have detailed knowledge of a small number
of local areas, which are then related to each other at a
higher level of scale. The precise relations between local
areas may not be known.
Golledge (1978)
- Anchor Point Hypothesis: places at local level organised
around central anchor points
- anchor points form basis for spatial organisation at
higher level
- minor places in two local areas are not necessarily
directly related in representation
Kuipers (1982)
- Atlas Metaphor as more appropriate analogy for spatial
representation might an atlas
- knowledge of environment represented at different scales
and levels of detail on different pages.
2) Orientation Specificity
Map is a view from a single viewpoint, so representation
will more orientation-specific than representations derived
from direct experience where environment is experienced
from a number of different perspectives over time.
4) Some Causes of Distortions:
Lloyd and Heivly (1987)
three factors which may give rise to distortions:
- topographical factors: major environmental barriers and
relative density or salience of areas and locations.
- person factors: type of activity people undertake in
environment, goals fulfilled by spatial behaviour and
familiarity with environment, sources of spatial
information (direct/indirect).
- processing factors: distortions which arise as
consequences of normal cognitive function.
Thorndyke & Hayes-Roth (1982)
- participants also asked to make bearing estimates to
locations while standing at various points in the building.
-> map participants significantly less accurate in this task
than direct experience participants.
Rossano & Warren (1989)
- participants made direction estimates after learning a
simple experimental layout from a map.
-> less accurate when the maps were examined out of
alignment with the layout.
Evidence for systematic distortions and hierarchical
representations has led away from 'map in the head'
metaphor to view of cognitive map as a number of fixed,
local systems of reference organized into a nested
hierarchical structure
See also:
Wayfinding research: Passini (1992), Golledge (1999)
Space Syntax: special issue of Environment and Behavior,
January 2003 (Volume 35, No. 1)
Learning about Space from Maps
Why should psychologists be interested in maps?
- maps used in everyday lives: for work, leisure or just to
find an address
- maps are cultural artefacts that potentially allow us to
conceptualise the environment in ways not possible via
direct experience alone
- children exposed to maps from early age, so may
influence the way spatial cognition develops
Differences between maps and direct experience
Direct: experience the environment from within, from a
large number of different perspectives over time.
Map: presents layout of space all at once, but from a single
perspective outside and above the map.
- leads to a number of predictions about differences
between representations gained from direct experience
and those gained from examining a map of an
environment.
1) Effect of Type and Amount of Experience
Small amount of direct experience provides us with
fragmentary knowledge. Single glance at map provides
immediate survey-level knowledge
Suggests that map learning gives almost immediate
impression of overall layout of environment compared with
direct experience which must be built up over time.
Evans & Pezdek (1980)
participants judged relative position of triads of locations
from map-learned or directly learned knowledge.
-> reaction times for map-learned environments increased
as a function of rotation from original orientation as
presented on the map.
-> no rotation effect for judgements of directly learned
locations.
MacEachren (1992)
multi-orientation map (a map which is successively
presented to the learner at several different orientations via
a computer screen) minimizes the orientation specificity of
the resulting mental representation
Why?: Maps may be encoded as quasi-pictorial images
and read-off by the 'mind's eye' whereas direct experience
of an environment leads to a procedural representation
People may use an egocentric encoding strategy for the
spatial relations of locations on maps, but an externally
based system for real environments
BUT: some similarities in the way that spatial information
from maps and from direct experience is structured in
cognitive representations
- tendency to simplify
- imposing hierarchical structure
Thorndyke and Hayes-Roth (1982)
tested the knowledge of the layout of one floor of office
building.
Controlled for:
- type of exposure (direct or map)
- amount of exposure:
Direct: 1 to 2 mths, 6 to 12 mths and 12 to 24 mths for
direct exposure participants
Map: first group studied map until they could draw it
accurately, second group studied map for 30 minutes
beyond this criterion and the third for 60 minutes beyond
criterion.
-> direct exposure groups superior to the map groups on
the judgement of route distances.
-> for straight-line distances performance of direct
experience participants improved over amount of
experience
-> for straight line distances all map participants were as
accurate as most experienced direct exposure
participants.
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References
* available online
Core
Kitchin, R., & Blades, M. (2002). The cognition of
geographic space. London: I.B. Tauris.
Kitchin, R., & Freundschuh, S. (2000). Cognitive mapping:
past, present and future. London: Routledge.
Kitchin, R.M. (1994). Cognitive maps: what are they and
why study them? Journal of Environmental Psychology,
14, 1-19.
Ungar, S. (2005). Cognitive maps. In Caves, R. (ed)
Encyclopedia of the City, London: Routledge.
Suplementary
Golledge, R. (1987). Environmental Cognition. In Stokols,
D. & Altman, I. (ed) Handbook of Environmental
Psychology. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Evans, G. (1980). Environmental Cognition. Psychological
Bulletin, 88, 259-287.
Siegel, A.W. & White, S. (1975). The development of
spatial representations of large-scale environments.
Advances in Child Development and Behaviour, 11, 9-55.
Kuipers, B. (1982). The "map in the head" metaphor.
Environment and Behavior, 14, 202-220.
Couclelis, H., Golledge, R.G., Gale, N. & Tobler, W.
(1987). Exploring the anchor-point hypothesis of spatial
cognition. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 7, 99122.
Tversky, B. (1981). Distortions in memory for maps.
Cognitive Psychology, 13, 407-433.
Tversky, B. (2000). Level and structure of spatial
knowledge. In Kitchin, R., & Freundschuh, S. (2000).
Cognitive mapping: past, present and future. London:
Routledge.
* Lloyd, R. & Heivly, C. (1987). Systematic distortions in
urban cognitive maps. Annals of the Association of
American Geographers, 77, 191-207.
McNamara, T.P. (1986). Mental representations of spatial
relations. Cognitive Psychology, 18, 87-121.
Hirtle, S.C. & Jonides, J. (1985). Evidence of hierarchies in
cognitive maps. Memory and Cognition, 13, 208-217.
Thorndyke, P.W. & Hayes-Roth, B. (1982). Differences in
spatial knowledge acquired from maps and navigation.
Cognition, 14, 560-589.
Golledge, R.G. (ed) (1999). Wayfinding behavior: cognitive
mapping and other spatial processes. Baltimore, Ml: John
Hopkins University Press.
Passini, R. (1984). Spatial representations, a wayfinding
perspective. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 4,
153-164.
* Environment and Behavior, January 2003 (Volume 35,
No. 1)
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Ungar, S. (2005). Cognitive maps. In R. Caves (Ed.), Encyclopedia of the City (pp. 79-80). London: Routledge.
COGNITIVE MAPS
The term 'cognitive map' refers to mental
representations underlying our ability to remain
orientated in our surroundings as we move
about. It was coined by Edward Tolman to
explain the behaviour of rats that appeared to
learn the layout of a maze, rather than just
sequences of responses that would lead to the
goal. Subsequently, studies have considered
other animals, including humans, asking how
mental representations of our surroundings are
acquired, structured and used.
Various research methods are used for
investigating, or 'externalising', cognitive maps:
from navigation tasks or simple sketch mapping,
to complex statistical procedures on people's
estimates of distance or direction. Two main
areas of research have used such methods. By
externalising people's cognitive maps to
investigate their *image of the city, researchers
attempted to determine the 'legibility' of various
cities, to inform and improve urban planning
(see Kevin Lynch). In contrast, psychologists
and behavioural geographers have investigated
the structure, geometric properties and
acquisition of people's mental representations of
their surroundings.
Cognitive maps are acquired in two main ways:
direct experience of an environment, and indirect
experience from maps or verbal descriptions.
With direct learning, representations develop
through a series of stages: first a sequence of
landmarks along a route is learned; later the
route is structured into segments; and finally, the
various routes are integrated into coherent
representation of one's surroundings. When an
environment is learned from a map, we are able
to skip these stages and perceive the structure of
the environment immediately. However there are
important differences in the resulting
representations. Most significantly, they tend to
retain a bias in respect of the map's orientation
(i.e. it will usually be more difficult to use the
information when facing south than when facing
north).
The term cognitive map suggests a 'cartographic
map in the head', in the form of some kind of
mental image that can be 'scanned by the mind's
eye'. However, cognitive maps appear not to be
structured in a uniform way, like the continuous
sheet of a map, but have a hierarchical structure
and include some systematic distortions, which
are thought to reduce the amount of information
contained in the mental representations, thus
making it easier to store and retrieve the
information, without producing significant
limitations in spatial orientation ability. For
instance, information about relative locations of
districts in a city would be represented at a
separate hierarchical level from information
about the locations of places (e.g. shops) within
the districts. Accordingly, people find it more
difficult to make spatial judgements about pairs
of locations across districts than between pairs of
locations in the same district. Many other
simplifying distortions in cognitive maps result
from the schematisation of spatial information,
such as representing curvy roads as straighter or
representing a side road as joining the main road
at a right angle whatever the actual angle.
(see also environmental perception)
FURTHER READING
Kitchin, R.M. and Blades, M. (2002). The
cognition of geographic space. London: Tauris.
Kitchin, R.M. & Freundschuh, S. (eds.) (2000).
Cognitive Mapping: Past, Present and Future.
London: Routledge.