Spatial Cognition and Reasoning.

Abstract

This paper summarizes several cognitive studies of spatial knowledge processing. The studies investigated the types of representation of spatial knowledge, the techniques individuals use to acquire knowledge from maps, and the differences between the knowledge acquired from maps and navigational experience. Three major conclusions emerge from these studies: (1) People encode several types of spatial knowledge in memory, including images of physical objects, memory of actions and procedures, symbolic abstractions of the environment (e.g., names, distances), and spatial maps; (2) Different types of spatial knowledge are optimal for different tasks (e.g., orienting oneself, estimating distances, reconstructing spatial relations among distant objects); and (3) Individuals vary in their strategies and abilities for acquiring spatial knowledge. (Author)

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Apr 01, 1980
Accession Number
ADA084344

Entities

People

  • Perry W. Thorndyke

Organizations

  • RAND Corporation

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical
  • Human Systems
  • Space

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Acquisition
  • Cognition
  • Computer Science
  • Corporations
  • Dead Reckoning
  • Education
  • Environment
  • Geography
  • Human Behavior
  • Images
  • Military Research
  • Navigation
  • Psychology
  • Reasoning
  • Social Sciences
  • Thinking
  • Training

Readers

  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Computer Vision.
  • Vision Science/Vision Psychology/Cognitive Neuroscience.