Human Spatial Cognition and Experience

Mind in the World, World in the Mind

Toru Ishikawa

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781351251273
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychologie
• Subtopic: Psychologie cognitive et cognition

This book offers students an introduction to human spatial cognition and experience and is designed for graduate and advanced undergraduate students who are interested in the study of maps in the head and the psychology of space.

We live in space and space surrounds us. We interact with space all the time, consciously or unconsciously, and make decisions and actions based on our perceptions of that space. Have you ever wondered how some people navigate perfectly using maps in their heads while other people get lost even with a physical map? What do you mean when you say you have a poor "sense of direction"? How do we know where we are? How do we use and represent information about space?

This book clarifies that our knowledge and feelings emerge as a consequence of our interactions with the surrounding space, and show that the knowledge and feelings direct, guide, or limit our spatial behavior and experience. Space matters, or more specifically space we perceive matters. Research into spatial cognition and experience, asking fundamental questions about how and why space and spatiality matters to humans, has thus attracted attention. It is no coincidence that the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded for research into a positioning system in the brain or "inner GPS" and that spatial information and technology are recognized as an important social infrastructure in recent years.

This is the first book aimed at graduate and advanced undergraduate students pursuing this fascinating area of research. The content introduces the reader to the field of spatial cognition and experience with a series of chapters covering theoretical, empirical, and practical issues, including cognitive maps, spatial orientation, spatial ability and thinking, geospatial information, navigation assistance, and environmental aesthetics.

Chapter 1

Why is spatial special?

To know where you are in space

You are now starting to read a book about space. If it is morning time, think about what you will be doing today. You go to school after stopping by the post office, have lunch with your roommate at Highland Cafe, and go downtown to see the latest movie. If it is evening time, consider what you did today. You took a midterm exam in calculus in Columbus Hall, talked about your thesis with your advisor in her office, and did a literature search in the Main Library. You note in these examples the fact that your behavior takes place (literally) at a specific place, at a specific time. That is, you are located in space and time (Figure 1.1). Where are you reading this book now?

Figure 1.1 Trace of your activities on a day. This diagram, called a space–time prism, shows where you were that day. Human behavior thus takes place in space and time, and we will look at the spatial–temporal nature (particularly spatial components) of human cognition and experience in this book. © OpenStreetMap contributors, https://www.openstreetmap.org/

Space and time, or where and when, are found in almost all our behaviors as fundamental and integral components. What do we know, then, about space and time? We can conceptualize time as a temporal flow within which we are located, going from the past into the future. Time intersects us in a plane called the present. If we look back, we see the arrow of time extending back into the past; if we look ahead, we see the arrow moving into the future. The future becomes the present; the present becomes the past. What about space? Everyday activities that we engage in, as varied as driving from home to work, taking a detour to avoid traffic congestion, choosing where to be seated in a classroom, or arranging furniture in a room, involve cognitive processing concerning where, whether we are conscious of it or not. We live in space and space surrounds us; a fact that seems so plain that we usually do not pay close attention to it, but it has important consequences for our everyday cognition and behavior. St. Augustine stated in his discussion of the nature of time:

Yet is it not true that in conversation we refer to nothing more familiarly or knowingly than time? And surely we understand it when we speak of it; we understand it also when we hear another speak of it. What, then, is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks me, I do not know.

(The Confessions, Book XI, Chapter XIV, trans. A. C. Outler)

Can we ask, then, What is space?

Now consider what it means that we live in space and space surrounds us. We move around in the environment and perceive the surrounding space, or we interact with the environment. Through interaction, we know, feel, and think about the environment. Put differently, the environment affords us the opportunities to learn about and attend to the information relevant to our behavior. Importantly, the knowledge and feelings about the environment guide, mold, or stimulate our behavior in an adaptive way. Our knowledge and feelings about surrounding environments emerge through interactions with them, and our behavior builds on the knowledge and feelings that we have (or represent) in our minds. For example, we go and drop a letter in a certain mailbox; we point to a specific direction when asked for navigational directions; we take a seat in the front or back row in a classroom; or we choose among alternative routes from home to work. All these behaviors reflect our thoughts and feelings about the places. We behave that way because the mailbox we choose is closest to home; the destination is located in that direction; the front or back seat fits the purpose of studying or sleeping; or the route is more scenic or less congested. More correctly, we think that the mailbox is closest to home; we think that the destination is in that direction; we prefer that seat; or we like that route. These observed behaviors are thus based on what we think, what we know, and what we feel about the places. Golledge and Stimson (1997, pp. 4–7) used the term spatial behavior to emphasize the process of thinking (information processing) underlying observed behavior and distinguished it from mere behavior in space (see also Rushton, 1969).

Thinking about space is therefore indispensable for us, because we live in space—space matters. For research into spatial cognition, the phrase “live in space” has important implications. The space we live in, or the environment, is larger than and surrounds the human body (Ittelson, 1973). We therefore need to explore the environment to acquire knowledge about it, which is in stark contrast to the case of object perception, where we view an object as an external observer (Figure 1.2). The distinction between exploration and observation, or being an explorer and an observer, has significant consequences for the learning of the environment, which we will see in detail in the following chapters.

Figure 1.2 Perception of an object (left) and perception of the environment (right). You are an observer in the former case and an explorer in the latter case, an important distinction to be made in the discussion of cognition and experience of space. Photographs from https://pixabay.com/

Space matters, but in what ways? Most notably, our spatial behavior is influenced by the notion of distance. Places are located in space, being separated from each other by a distance, which we need to overcome by physically traveling, such as commuting to work, going to a grocery store, or dropping a letter in a mailbox. In such behavior of traveling over a distance, do people choose where to go haphazardly or do they show a systematic tendency in their choice of places and routes? Research has shown that the latter is the case, and a well-known statement describes this phenomenon as: “Everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things” (Tobler, 1970, p. 236). The degree of interaction between places decreases as the places are separated by a longer distance. Simply put, people go to nearer places rather than distant places, other things being equal.

To fully appreciate the influence of distance on spatial behavior, we should note that what matters is not physical distance but rather the distance that we perceive (i.e., how far you think it is, not necessarily how far it physically is). Hence, it is more correct to say, “Space we perceive matters,” as seen in the example of going to a mailbox that we think is closest. That is, our spatial behavior is based on perceived environments, as well as physical environments (Figure 1.3). Physical environments are out there in the world, and perceived environments are here in the mind, showing what we think and how we feel about the environments and guiding our behavior in the environments.

Figure 1.3 Relationship between a physical space, a subjective space, and human behavior. The subjective space, or mental map of the environment, plays an important role in directing our behavior (cognition, thinking, and feelings) in the environment: Space we perceive matters. Reprinted with permission of Springer Nature from Ishikawa, 2016a, p. 117.

Space for humans

Humans have always been interested in space, and in knowing about space. Humans have a long history of exploring, modifying, and adapting to the environment. They evolved in savannas in Africa and expanded their habitats outwards. They began to use tools, hunt for food, and communicate verbally with each other. They expanded their knowledge about the earth through explorations and scientific observations; for example, they discovered new lands through rough and long voyages, made empirical observations to reveal the earth’s rotation around its axis and revolution around the sun, and explored outer space by spacecraft. As well as learning about the environment, humans represent the knowledge externally to communicate it to other people, notably in the form of maps. We will see examples of ancient maps, such as Lascaux cave paintings and the Babylonian Map of the World, below.

Along with the basic human desire, knowledge about space has been sought through academic approaches in the discipline of geography. The geographer’s interest spans all areas of the earth’s environments and human activities that take place on the earth (you may think of the Vermeer painting The Geographer, which we will see in Chapter 2). Within the discipline of geography is a branch called physical geography, which mainly studies elements of the natural environment such as landforms, soils, rocks, rivers, oceans, ecosystems, and climates. Physical geographers thus seek to reveal the structures and processes of the earth’s environment. Another branch within geography is human geography. This studies people and their social, cultural, and economic activities, with a particular focus on the interaction and interrelationships between people and the environment. Topics of interest to human geographers include population, migration, socio-political systems, economic development, settlement patterns, and urbanization. With academic interest in these issues, human geographers have developed a large inventory of knowledge about spatial distributions and patterns of human activities, systematically detailed and synthesized for individual places.

Together with such a synthetic approach to particular places, human geographers also noted the significance of systematic investigation of human activities from the perspective of individuals, instead of groups of people, based on countries, cultures, or communities. Particularly in the 1960s, human geographers shifted the focus from aggregate to disaggregate data analysis, and began to look at the individual’s knowledge and decision making in pursuit of a process-oriented understanding of spatial phenomena. Geographers now look at individual persons as sensate beings who actively gather information about their surroundings and make decisions on the basis of their processing and interpretations of the acquired information. This shift in interest is characterized by the recognition of the importance of explaining processes behind observed spatial phenomena (the questions of how and why) in addition to describing the forms of distributions (what and where). In other words, geographers go beyond “knowing the names of the capitals, rivers and mountains in each country of the world” (Gersmehl, 2008, p. 2). We will discuss this in Chapter 3.

As geographers have always been interested in space and place, psychologists...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Preface
• List of figures
• List of tables
• 1 Why is spatial special?
• 2 Brief history of research into spatial cognition
• 3 Maps in the head
• 4 The structure of cognitive maps
• 5 The acquisition of cognitive maps
• 6 Spatial abilities and individual differences
• 7 Communicating information about space
• 8 Development of spatial cognition in children
• 9 Feelings about space
• 10 Space, information, and society
• References
• Index