Cognitive map and cognitive mapping

Everything I see is in principle within my reach, at least within reach of my sight, marked on the map of the ‘I can’ (Merleau-Ponty, 1964, p.162).

Our objective is to explore inner space, a little-known region of that dark continent inside man’s head (Downs and Stea, 1977, p.4).

In previous literature, the term ‘cognitive map’ has been used to refer to a kind of ‘mental picture’ of a place, including both the broad and specific sense of its geographical features, as well as memories, emotions and other associations. Downs and Stea (1977), in a pioneering research, distinguish between ‘cognitive mapping’, which they describe as the mental process of thinking about a place or a route; and

‘cognitive map’, which they say is ‘a person’s organised representation of some part of the spatial environment’ (p.6). In other words, are relatively cautious about                                                                                                                

30 For a detailed discussion on methodology and use of sketch mapping in different research, see:

Gould and White, 1986; Lynch, 1960; Downs and Stea, 1977; Kitchin and Blades, 2002; Özkul and

separating out the concepts ‘in’ the brain from things in the world. However, there is some slippage, for example, their examples of cognitive maps – or representations of mental models – include a drawn map and a child’s painting of their

neighbourhood, but also ‘the picture that comes to mind every time you try to cross town on the subway system’ (Downs and Stea, 1977, p.6), which really should be treated as part of cognitive mapping, the process, rather than as a cognitive map, a representation.

Creating a ‘representation’ of a “picture in the head” is a separate act of creation, since a cognitive map does not exist as a ‘thing’ that you could then hope to draw or reproduce (Özkul and Gauntlett, 2014). However, as Gauntlett argues in Özkul and Gauntlett (2014), ‘the collection of memories, feelings and associations about a place, which are somewhere, somehow, in a person’s brain, are not something that could be straightforwardly transferred to paper’.

Accordingly, Kitchin and Blades (2002, p.1) accept the term cognitive map as referring to the mental processes, with other representations described for what they are. In this regard, a cognitive map is ‘an individual’s knowledge of spatial and environmental relations, and the cognitive process associated with the encoding and retrieval of the information from which it is composed’ (Kitchin and Blades, 2002, p.1), which is a somewhat more sophisticated formulation, although it leaves out related emotions and memories. I will follow this terminology, and to ease confusion, I will use the term ‘sketch map’ (Lynch, 1960) when referring to the hand drawn maps of London. In The Image of the City, Lynch ‘indicated the utility of such sketch maps for obtaining insights into how people mentally structure the city and which elements are perceived as important. Such information is not readily obtainable by other means, which perhaps accounts for the wide application of this essentially projective technique’ (Saarinen, cited in Downs and Stea, 1973, p.148).

Although their use of terminology can today seem a little simplistic, Downs and Stea (1977, p.27) made a valuable early contribution to our understanding of

‘inner space’:

In some very fundamental but inexpressible way, our own self-identity is inextricably bound up with knowledge of the spatial environment. We can organize personal experience along the twin dimensions of space and time.

But the dimensions are inseparable – there can be no personal biography of

‘what’ things happened ‘when’ without a sense of the place in which they happened. Cognitive maps serve as coat hangers for assorted memories.

They provide a vehicle for recall – an image of ‘where’ brings back a recollection of ‘who’ and ‘what’. This sense of place is essential to any ordering of our lives.

Spatial behaviour is central to everyday life. Human beings are able to learn how to navigate in their environment, but we are not normally conscious of this work, or its origins. Our spatial ability to navigate in a city is usually taken for granted, and as such, goes unnoticed. ‘In order to traverse space, we make hundreds of complex spatial choices and decisions, in most cases without any reference to sources such as maps, instead relying on our knowledge of where places are’

(Kitchin and Blades, 2002, p.1). We usually only realise that we have actually acquired a sense of place and have a mental image of a city once we get lost;

however, getting completely lost in contemporary urban environments is a rather rare experience.

Today, equipped with mobile and location-aware technologies, some people may even feel that they no longer need maps or street signs. With a few taps, we can locate ourselves, know where to get things and to find people, as well as how to get there via computer generated routes (Of course, this depends on having a suitable device, the skill to use it effectively and a decent mobile Internet connection).

Therefore, how we define maps and locational information has also changed, as well as how we define urban spaces and cities.

Users of mobile technologies can add layers of virtual information to places, which has increased the level of integration of maps into our everyday lives. Maps are used not only to navigate in contemporary urban life, but also to spatialise information (Gordon and de Souza e Silva, 2011). The act of checking-in at a place on an application such as Foursquare creates personal traces on the network, and those traces start to define what kinds of places we check-in at, and why. This has created – for some users at least – platforms for individual storytelling, as these technologies and applications allow users to map their everyday activities and write reviews, insert photos or memory notes onto those places visited. With the help of such maps, our ‘knowing is translated into telling’ (White, 1980, p.5), and we are given the ability to narrate both our experiences and memories of places. Within this

process of representation and the creation of a self-narrative of one’s everyday life through locational information, a tool commonly used for identifying routes, the map, emerges as an interface in which users can create their own geo-tagged stories of their own lives.