Cognitive Maps: Where We Know

Have you ever heard someone say that he or she lacks a sense of direction? Despite how frequently this sentiment seems to occur, humans have evolved to be adept navigators—or at least we’re supposed to be.

            When storing information, our brains make connections between clusters of neurons associated with the salient features of an object, and then we link these clusters together, creating an even more complex network of networks. The smaller networks, called internal representations, are constructed from perception, which allows us to recognize objects after encountering them at least once. The larger, encompassing psychological web is referred to as a cognitive map, which provides us with the ability to make inferences about subjects that the individual objects compose. The depth of our understanding of an object or environment depends on the richness of our cognitive maps, which are constantly edited and often rearranged with newly perceived information. The ability to form predictions about a subject is a powerful characteristic of mental maps. This is particularly helpful with way-finding, a skill honed by humans’ need to return to a home base, because it helps us to infer new or alternate paths between places despite never having traveled those ways.

            Humans, as object-based information processors, organize ideas spatially. As an architecture student, I study a field that is all about how people interact with space. In my freshman architecture seminar, we are required to make tracings of floors plans of certain buildings and then match photos of the buildings to locations on the plans. Although most of us had never seen the building we were assigned, we were usually able to deduce the viewpoint of each photo by imagining the flat floor plans as three-dimensional space. This was possible because cognitive maps can be built from indirect experiences such as simply looking at pictures and thus allow us to make connections between partial images of a whole.

             (Here's a plan in which I highlighted the view depicted in the photo.)

While perception lends itself to object recognition, knowing allows us to go beyond the actuality of the object we recognize. For example, a classmate from my seminar class who has directly experienced his or her assigned building may have affective coding (or emotions) tied to the images that he or she traces. These emotions may not be part of the tangible object, but the student’s cognitive map of the building may have links to certain feelings and memories that are triggered by the perception of the building. His or her cognitive map is thus augmented by pre-familiarization and permits his or her knowledge of the environment extend beyond base reality.

            However, these maps have a flaw. Since our brains are limited by channel capacity in how much detail they can hold or recall at once, our cognitive maps are only simplifications of the real objects. This is why when trying to recall information about something, we only remember the most prominent features of it. When my architecture class went on a field trip to take a tour of Cranbook campus on the outskirts of Detroit, my brain only retained fragments of the whole campus to sustain a vague, holistic mental image. Furthermore, I was unfamiliar with the landscape and hence had difficulty piecing together a mental model of the complete environment at first. I did have a burgeoning mental model in place, though, from lectures and pictures given to me in class. This preparation helped me quickly grasp the overall layout of the campus by giving me pre-familiarized object relationships to strengthen through direct experience. Since the environment was so new to me, I would have undoubtedly gotten lost without the tour guide, but perhaps less lost than I would have been without the information from class.

            Understanding the challenges and potential of mental models can not only help people adapt to changing social milieu, but also improve how information is delivered to people. Perhaps it is not our fault that some of us get lost so easily. Such as in the case study of relocating the elderly in which altering how the elderly are pre-familiarized with new environments had the potential to reduce their post-relocation mortality rates,  maybe the difficulty with navigation is not entirely a bad sense of direction.