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Cognitive map
Mental imagery
Mental rep of the enviro that surrounds us - Mental image of the rel's among objs [buildings on campus]
- Typically rep neighborhoods, cities, & countries--areas too large to see in single glanse so integrate info we've acquired from successive views
- Real world settings & ecological validity
- Spatial cognition
- Both analog & propositional in nature
- Judgments easier when mental map & physical map have matching orientations
- Usu reflect reality w/reasonable accuracy
- Mistakes usu "make sense" b/c systematic distortions of reality
- Distance: often distorted by factors like # intervening cities, semantic categories, landmarks
- Symmetric distortion: tend to construct maps in which shapes are more regular than in reality (90 degrees, symmetrical curves)
- Heuristics
- Integrate info from separate statements & combine them to form an integrated map
- Make above-below decisions much faster than left-right
- Reveal certain biases based on our LT interactions w/our bodies & physical properties of external world
- Maps from verbal descriptions rep both orientation & point of view
- Active nature of human cog processes--create a model to rep our knowledge
- LTM: [remember layout of UCSB campus]
- Working memory: help us switch btwn current task at hand [find my way to Freebirds] & use past mental images of walking thru IV
- Experience based
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Spatial cognition
Cognitive maps
Our thoughts abt spatial issues - Includes not only cog maps but also how we remember the world we navigate & how we keep track of objs in a spatial array
- Interdisciplinary in scope
- We're often unaware just how much info we know abt it
- Indiv diff's in these skills quite large but ppl tend to be accurate in judging ability to find way to unfamiliar locations (metacog)
- Diff's correlated w/performance on spatial tasks [mental rotation]
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Landmark effect
Cognitive maps
General tendency to provide shorter estimates when traveling to a landmark vs. nonlandmark - Demonstrates importance of context when we make decisions abt distances & other features of our cog maps
- Tend to establish important landmarks when we hear/read a story & uses those as reference points for adding other locations to our cog maps
- Have a special, privileged status
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90 degree-angle heuristic
Cognitive maps
"Regularize" angles in cog maps so more like 90 degree angles - Rep angles in a mental map as being closer to 90 degrees than they really are (intersecting streets)
- Easier to store schematic version than precisve version that accurately reps all the little details
- Use heuristics when we rep relative positions in our mental maps--much harder to remember 60 degree angle
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Symmetry heuristic
Cognitive maps
When there are curves/unusual deviation in roads we tend to think of them as symmetric [state borders, curve in a river/freeway] - We remember figures as being more symmetrical & regular than they truly are
- General pattern: small inconsistencies of geographic reality are smoothed over creating cog maps that are idealized & standardized
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Rotation heuristic
Cognitive maps
When we apply this general principle our previous knowledge can distort our memories of spatial rel's, making them more reg than they actually are - A figure that's slightly tilted will be remembered as being either more vertical/horizontal than it really is
- [Think coastline as vertical]
- Cross cultural evidence
- Encourages us to construct cog maps that are more orderly & schematic than geographic reality
- VS. alignment heuristic: requires rotating a single coastline, country, building, or other figure in a clockwise/counterclockwise fashion so its border is oriented in nearly vertical/horizontal direction
- Makes sense but when our mental maps rely too strongly on it we miss important details that make each stimulus unique (top-down too active)
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Alignment heuristic
Cognitive maps
When we apply this general principle our previous knowledge can distort our memories of spatial rels, making them more reg than they actually are - A series of geographic structures will be remembered as being more lined up than they really are
- [Rome/Philadelphia ex: ppl line them up in same latitude & incorrectly conclude Rome is south]
- VS. rotation heuristic: requires lining up several separate countries, buildings, or other figures in a straight row (vs. single)
- Encourages us to construct cog maps that are more orderly & schematic than geographic reality
- Makes sense but when our mental maps rely too strongly on it we miss important details that make each stimulus unique (top-down too active)
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Spatial framework model
Cognitive maps
Emphasizes the above-below spatial dimension is esp important in our thinking; front-back dimension is moderately important & R-L dimension is least important - Vertical/above-below dimension: gravity (important & accessible), physically asymmetric to body (easy to tell apart)
- Front-back dimension: usu interact w/objs in front of us more easily than behind us (asymmetry); easy to distinguish btwn front & back
- R-L dimension: perceive objs equally on each side; symmetrical
- Studies show ppl process above-below decisions significantly faster than L-R
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