Perspectives on human spatial cognition: memory, navigation, and environmental learning

Excerpt

Spatial learning and spatial behavior have been major topics of interest since the early days of psychology, and undoubtedly helped to establish experimental psychology on solid scientific foundations. Over the last 30 years or so, psychology has seen the emergence of “spatial cognition” as a new domain in its own right, intended to account for spatial behavior in terms of underlying mechanisms and the associated representations (e.g., Siegel & White, 1975). At the same time, the emphasis on the cognitive determinants of spatial behavior has led to their inclusion in more general theoretical accounts of human cognition, including its architecture and computational mechanisms. Not surprisingly, the increased interest of psychologists in spatial cognition has paralleled the development of behavioral geography, i.e., the part of human geography intended to explain how the behavior of individuals and populations within geographic space is determined by their cognitive representations (e.g., Downs & Stea, 1973; Moore & Golledge, 1976). Over the same period of time, the connections between psychology and other cognitive sciences, such as linguistics and computer science, have led scientists towards new frontiers in the study of the capacities of human and artificial cognitive systems. The representation of spatial knowledge has become a primary task for computer scientists, and a number of original works have set out to integrate theories, empirical studies, and formal models of spatial cognition (e.g., Freksa, Brauer, Habel, & Wender, 2000). …