Cognitive Maps: Encoding and Decoding Information

The experiences of learning a city by direct experience or navigating through it and studying a map of it provide people with different types of spatial information. Navigation is thought to provide procedural knowledge, which is stored as verbal coding, and map reading is thought to provide survey...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Annals of the Association of American Geographers Vol. 79; no. 1; pp. 101 - 124
Main Author: Lloyd, Robert
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Oxford, UK Taylor & Francis Group 01.03.1989
Association of American Geographers
Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Subjects:
absolute distortion
Behaviour and perception
Bgi / Prodig
Cartography
Cities
Cognition
Cognition & reasoning
cognitive map
Cognitive mapping
Coordinate systems
Decoding
Downtowns
Encoding
Encoding (Cognitive process)
Error rates
Geodetic position
Human geography
Information
Landmarks
Mapping
Memory
Navigation
Population geography and social geography
procedural knowledge
reference points
relative distortion
Social research
survey knowledge
Spatial behaviour
Cognitive process
Error
Perception
Urban area
Cognitive space
Location
ISSN:0004-5608, 2469-4452, 1467-8306, 2469-4460
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:The experiences of learning a city by direct experience or navigating through it and studying a map of it provide people with different types of spatial information. Navigation is thought to provide procedural knowledge, which is stored as verbal coding, and map reading is thought to provide survey knowledge, which is stored as imagery coding. Subjects who learned a city primarily through years of navigation and subjects who learned a city by studying a cartographic map for several minutes were asked to perform the simple experimental task of locating familiar landmarks relative to reference points. Distortions in the cognitive maps of subjects were analyzed to determine significant differences in patterns of distance and direction errors. Patterns of absolute distortion are explained by theories related to the use of alignment and rotation heuristics for encoding information and an implicit scaling process for decoding information. Subjects who learned the city from studying a cartographic map were significantly more accurate and faster at performing the experimental task than subjects who learned the city through direct experience or navigation. Both groups were significantly more accurate when making their judgments with centrally located reference points than with peripherally located reference points. These results provide knowledge of processes used in cognitive mapping and the distortions caused by these processes. Ultimately such studies lead to an understanding of spatial decision-making and behavior.
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content type line 14
ISSN:0004-5608
2469-4452
1467-8306
2469-4460
DOI:10.1111/j.1467-8306.1989.tb00253.x