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Explore your inner navigation system: Do you know what spatial knowledge you use?
In cognitive psychology, spatial cognition is the process of acquiring, organizing, utilizing and modifying knowledge about the spatial environment. This is primarily about how animals (including humans) behave in space and the knowledge they build around that space, not just about the space itself. These abilities enable individuals to handle basic and advanced cognitive tasks in daily life. Therefore, exploring human spatial knowledge not only attracts the attention of psychology, but also promotes the intersection and communication between multiple disciplines such as neuroscience and artificial intelligence.
Human spatial cognition is closely related to how we describe our environment, find our way around new environments, and plan routes.
Through many studies, scientists have developed a series of experiments based on participant reports and performance measures to understand how individuals orient themselves in space in relation to their environment. The recent increase in the implementation of virtual reality technology provides researchers with an opportunity to allow participants to interact with unknown environments in a highly controlled context.
The cognitive maps used by humans in their behavior are the most advanced form of spatial cognition. These maps store information about landmarks and paths between them. This knowledge can be built up from a variety of sources, including map symbols, verbal descriptions, and computer-based guidance systems in addition to tightly coordinated vision and movement.
There are three basic types of spatial knowledge acquisition: landmark knowledge, path knowledge and survey knowledge, and the development of these three types of knowledge is gradual.
According to the classic view proposed by Siegel and White in 1975, landmark knowledge is the salient objects noticed during action, while path knowledge is acquired by moving between these landmarks. However, as research deepened, this step-by-step theory began to be challenged. Research has found that people can build investigative knowledge even after minimal exploration.
The classification of space can be divided into different levels. Montello stipulates four types of space: graphic space, visual space, environmental space and geographical space, each with different characteristics and learning methods. Environmental space is considered the most relevant part of human navigation because it provides the best opportunity to understand the environment through movement.
In the process of constructing spatial knowledge, people form a cognitive framework of the environment based on a reference point.
When acquiring spatial knowledge, a distinction is usually made between egocentric and allocentric frames. The former is based on the individual itself, while the latter is based on the relative position of surrounding objects or landmarks. There is also a geocentric frame, which is usually used in large-scale environments and is associated with a coordinate system such as longitude and latitude.
Everyone experiences space differently, and some people prefer certain reference frames and strategies for representing space. These preferences are influenced by environmental characteristics. For example, in a single-path environment, people tend to use an egocentric perspective, while in an open environment with many landmarks, they are more inclined to use an allocentric perspective.
Biases in spatial cognition are systematic errors in how people use or attempt to retain spatial representations of information.
Research has found that people often make repeated errors when estimating distances or angles, suggesting that their mental maps and the knowledge they reflect are subject to systematic distortions. For example, when people estimate the distance between geographical landmarks, they often overestimate the distance, especially when faced with famous landmarks.
Furthermore, when objects in the spatial environment are not aligned, the errors may increase significantly. This shows that for humans, the arrangement of objects has an important influence on the accuracy of spatial cognition. When accounting for differences in the sex of the participants, the research also points to sex differences in spatial cognition, with sex influencing the size of the hippocampus and the capacity of spatial memory in some species.
Combining various research results, spatial navigation is an ability that requires continuous adjustment of strategies in a dynamic environment. Whether it’s intuitive path-finding or map-dependent global perspective, humans are constantly developing and improving their spatial cognition abilities. This is crucial to our understanding of the environment and its complexity in our daily lives.
In the rapidly changing modern society, understanding our own spatial cognitive methods will help improve our ability to learn and adapt. What kind of changes can this bring to our lives?
