Cognition
Wayfinding
- Process of
getting from place to place
- Decision
making and action
- Ability to
use the conceptual model and cognitive map in goal
directed behavior
- "What
to do in order to reach a place"
- Humans are
highly skilled at direction finding
- Skill is
based on exposure and experience
- Major
complaint of building users in unfamiliar places
- Significant
cause of failures in critical situations
- Consequences
of failure are great, e.g. fear, stress, missed
opportunities, presentation of self, self concept
Examples of Cognitive Maps
Cognitive Map
Features
- Networks:
districts, edges, grids
- Points:
landmarks, nodes
- Lines:
paths, edges
- Levels of
scale
- Multiple
connections - "City is Not a Tree"
- Information
is both geographic and value laden
- Values - positive, negative, comparison
- Relationships - proximity, sequence, relative size
Cognitive
Mapping Process
M = f(PL, PE, E,
S)
where:
PL =
place (imageability)
PE= person
E = exposure
S =
significance
- Significance
creates the "foreground world"
- From data
to knowledge
- Incompleteness
and inaccuracies
- Foreground/background
worlds - salience and selection
- Meaning as
significance - cultural, social and personal
- Exposure -
length of exposure, familiarity, freedom to explore
- Imageability
of place - "spatial affordances"
- strong
physical features, e.g. landmarks, nodes, edges,
paths, districts
- activity
- complexity
- "good
form"
- alignment
to abstract reference systems
- stability
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