Cognitive mapping analysis and regional identity

Cartographica: The International Journal for Geographic Information and Geovisualization, 2007

The formative years of cognitive mapping research focused on theoretical understanding, with less emphasis on developing innovative methodologies to extract cognitive maps. By the 1990s, new cross-disciplinary exchanges with computer science and information technology had renewed interest in the field. This article describes a method for collecting, mapping, and exploring the sequence of sketch-map creation, including integration of the resulting sketch maps into a geographic information system (GIS) for visualization and potential geometric analyses. The method involves the use of a tablet computer that allowed subjects to draw their sketch maps directly onscreen while computer software simultaneously records the drawing process in audio and video format. Results from a pilot study with 45 participants demonstrate that the method preserves the quality of drawn sketch maps but adds several new data elements and insights. In particular, the audio data were used to add labels and other attributes to drawn sketch-map elements, whereas the video data allowed tracking of the sequence in which elements are drawn. Analysis shows that paths tend to be drawn more frequently at first but soon decrease in frequency in favour of landmarks. Nodes, boundaries, and districts tend to be drawn throughout the drawing process but are much less frequent. Explanation and implications of these findings are discussed with respect to past methods and theories.

Journal of Spatial Information Science, 2015

It is commonly recognized that free-hand sketch maps are influenced by cognitive impacts and therefore sketch maps are incomplete, distorted, and schematized. This makes it difficult to achieve a one-to-one alignment between a sketch map and its corresponding geo-referenced metric map. Nevertheless, sketch maps are still useful to communicate spatial knowledge, indicating that sketch maps contain certain spatial information that is robust to cognitive impacts. In existing studies, sketch maps are used frequently to measure cognitive maps. However, little work has been done on invariant spatial information in sketch maps, which is the information of spatial configurations representing correctly the real world. We aim to study such information from a cognitive perspective. This paper first presents basic spatial objects identified in sketch maps and then introduces sketch aspects that capture invariant spatial information. The accuracy and reliability of these aspects were evaluated by a human study. We collected sketch maps from participants, extracted and measured spatial relations of identified spatial objects, and in the end analyzed the accuracy and statistical significance of these relations. Based on the statistical survey, we propose in this paper a set of seven sketch aspects that constitute invariant spatial information, along with a spatial analysis method to measure them. The findings of these aspects help to understand which spatial information is preserved under the transformation from the physical world to human sketch maps.

Theories of Mapping Practice and Cartographic Representation, 2011

At the start of the 1970s, it was intellectually fashionable amongst behavioural geographers to investigate the significance of cognitive maps, and their impacts on people's spatial behaviour. Downs and Stea's book was probably the most influential overview of the field and brought together papers from almost all of the leading exponents of this kind of research. We have excerpted Chapter 1, which explores the dimensions of cognitive mapping, distinguishing between cartographic images and the cognitive constructs that are the focus of their attention. This conceptual piece is informed by a communications model of information transmission and explores processes and defines concepts underpinning research. The authors define the concepts of perception, cognition, attitude and preference, before explaining the differences between what people need to know and what they actually know. Amongst other concepts they focus on differences between locational and attribute information, the role of incomplete, distorted, schematised, and augmented cognitive maps, and some of the behavioural reasons for the mismatch between theory and practice. They conclude by urging further experimental investigation of behavioural evidence of cognitive mapping.

2013

The mental mapping method affords a lens into the way people produce and experience space, forms of spatial intelligence, and dynamics of human-environment relations. Mental mapping is the representation of an individual or group’s cognitive map, hand sketched and/or computer-assisted, in drafting and labeling a map or adding to and labeling an already existing map. Despite its long-term, rich, and multifaceted use across the social sciences, I found that the method’s development has been uneven and its analytics ad hoc and piecemeal. Drawing upon 32 mental sketch maps (MSM) and the interviews during which they were drafted, this paper provides an extensive review of the method, and details a total of 57 analytic components and techniques drawn from the literature and my own work in this study. I address these analytics from a critical geographic perspective in four categories to follow trends the data reveal. In my discussion I offer some future guidelines for research with MSM to continue to extend the method while growing from the body of knowledge already produced. This paper contributes a deeper understanding of how the mental maps can inform qualitative studies of people, place, and space across the social sciences.

It is often implicitly assumed by researchers that their readers understand what cognitive map and cognitive mapping are, and their justification for study. This paper differs in this respect by explaining explicitly the 'what' and 'why' questions often asked, demonstrating cognitive mapping's multidisciplinary research worth. First, it examines questions concerning what cognitive maps are, the confusion inherent from the use of the term 'map', and the usage and reasons for alternative expressions. Second, it examines the theoretical applications or conceptual research, concerning cognitive maps role in the influencing and explaining spatial behaviour; spatial choice and decision making; wayiinding and orientation; and the cognitive maps utility and role as a mnemonic and metaphorical devise; a shaper of world and local attitudes and perspectives; and for creating and coping with imaginary worlds. Third, it discusses cognitive mapping's practical and applied worth, concerning the planning of suitable living environments; advertising; crime solving; search and rescue, geographical educational issues, cartography and remote sensing; and in the designing and understanding computer interfaces and databases, especially Geographical Information Systems (GISs).