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Cognitive maps, mental maps, mind maps, cognitive models, or mental models are a type of mental processing composed of a series of psychological transformations by which an individual can acquire, code, store, recall, and decode information about the relative locations and attributes of phenomena in their everyday or metaphorical spatial environment.

The credit of the creation of this term is given to Edward Tolman.^[1] Cognitive maps have been studied in various fields, such as psychology, education, archaeology, planning, geography, architecture, landscape architecture , urban planning and management. As a consequence, these mental models are often referred to, variously, as cognitive maps, mental maps, scripts, schemata, and frames of reference.

Put more simply, cognitive maps are a method we use to construct and accumulate spatial knowledge, allowing the "mind's eye" to visualize images in order to reduce cognitive load, and enhance recall and learning of information. This type of spatial thinking can also be used as a metaphor for non-spatial tasks, where people performing non-spatial tasks involving memory and imaging use spatial knowledge to aid in processing the task.^[2] The oldest known formal method of using spatial locations to remember data is the "method of loci". This method was originally used by students of rhetoric in ancient Rome when memorizing speeches. To use it one must first memorize the appearance of a physical location (for example, the sequence of rooms in a building). When a list of words, for example, needs to be memorized, the learner visualizes an object representing that word in one of the pre-memorized locations. To recall the list, the learner mentally "walks through" the memorized locations, noticing the objects placed there during the memorization phase.^[3]

The neural correlates of a cognitive map have been speculated to be the place cell system in the hippocampus^[4] and the recently discovered grid cells in the entorhinal cortex.^[5]

[edit] Overview

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Tollman believed that we learn by trial and error. When we are successful, we remember and create cognitive maps of the places and circumstances. The proof for this came from experiments with rats in a maze performed by Tollman in the 1940s:

1. It seems the rats explore the maze for no other reason than for the fun of it.^[6]
2. If they know the maze well they will find their way even if the maze is filled with water and the rats is forced to swim in order to find its way to food.

Tollman's is more complex than learning theory, which is based on reward and punishment as motivators. Behaviorists like Watson & Pavlov ^[7] would see the nervous system as rather simple, and according to them learning is formed by reward and punishment. Metaphorically the brain is like a simple switchboard. Albert Bandura and G.H. Mead would add that imitating others (having role models) is also a motivator for learning. Tollman is talking about cognitive behaviorism, which is an important part of cognitive therapy today. ^[8]

The rats in the maze seem to learn even if they are not rewarded for it, and they also remember what they learn. This is a school of thought nowadays known as field theory. This group believes that in the course of learning something like a field map of the environment gets established in the rat's (or person's) brain. You could argue that the rat in running a maze is exposed to stimuli and is finally led as a result of these stimuli to the responses which actually occur. However the intervening brain processes are more complicated, more patterned and often, pragmatically speaking, more autonomous than do the stimulus-response psychologists. Although it's most likely that the rat is bombarded by stimuli, it's very likely that the nervous system is surprisingly selective as to which of these stimuli it will let in at any given time. Learning gives us a better chance to evaluate the future and survive ^[9][10]

The maps in the brain cannot be seen; we can only see the consequences of learning. The brain makes connections far more complex than those possible to see in a microscope or a scanner. Reductionism and Occams razor are excellent topics to read about if you want to learn more about how brain and learning relate to each other. It's a known fact that the human brain becomes more complex and interrelates in new ways during childhood and adolescence.

The "central office" (the Brain) itself is far more like a map control room than it is like an old-fashioned telephone exchange. The stimuli, which are allowed in, are not connected by just simple one-to-one switches to the outgoing responses. Rather, the incoming impulses are usually worked over and elaborated in the central control room into a tentative, cognitive-like map of the environment. And it is this tentative map, indicating routes and paths and environmental relationships, which finally determines what responses, if any, the animal will finally release. [p.193]

The map here is known to most people. However, it is upside down. Rotate the picture in your mind (or stand on your head) and you will see Africa. Now where is the Republic of South Africa? You know the map and you can use that knowledge. You just rotate the map in your mind and there you have it. Now go and teach your pet that! If you reorganize knowledge and learn a lot from it, it is Gestalt learning or an Aha moment (Aha-Erlebnis). Sometimes you have to combine knowledge in new ways.

Finally, it is also important to note how these maps are relatively narrow and strip-like, or broad and comprehensive. Both strip-maps and comprehensive-maps may be either correct or incorrect in the sense that they may, when acted upon, lead successfully to the animal's goal. The differences between such strip maps and such comprehensive maps will appear only when the rat is later presented with some change within the given environment. Then, the narrower and more strip-like the original map, the less will it carry over successfully to the new problem; whereas, the wider and the more comprehensive it was, the more adequately it will serve in the new set-up. In a strip-map the given position of the animal is connected by only a relatively simple and single path to the position of the goal. In a comprehensive-map a wider arc of the environment is represented, so that, if the starting position of the animal be changed or variations in the specific routes be introduced, this wider map will allow the animal still to behave relatively correctly and to choose the appropriate new route.

[edit] See also

• Cognition

[edit] References