Reginald G. Golledge (1999) Wayfinding Behavior: Cognitive Mapping and Other Spatial Processes.. Psycoloquy: 10(036) Cognitive Mapping (1)

Volume: 10 (next, prev) Issue: 036 (next, prev) Article: 1 (next prev first) Alternate versions: ASCII Summary
Topic:
Article:
PSYCOLOQUY (ISSN 1055-0143) is sponsored by the American Psychological Association (APA).
Psycoloquy 10(036): Wayfinding Behavior: Cognitive Mapping and Other Spatial Processes.

WAYFINDING BEHAVIOR: COGNITIVE MAPPING AND OTHER SPATIAL PROCESSES.
[John Hopkins University Press, 1999 xviii, 428pp, ISBN: 0-8018-5993-X]
Precis of Golledge on Cognitive-Mapping

Reginald G. Golledge
Department of Geography
University of California Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara CA 93106-4060
U.S.A.

golledge@geog.ucsb.edu

Abstract

This is an edited volume of essays by psychologists, biologists, cognitive scientists, computer scientists, and geographers on wayfinding by humans and other species. It addresses the extent to which cognitive maps may be universal, and produces evidence that humans, apes, some birds and some small mammals appear to behave as if they have internal representations that guide wayfinding processes in a map-like manner. Evidence also shows that insects, some mammals, and perhaps some birds may not evince such guided behavior, but rely more on spatial updating by dead-reckoning or pilotage. The multiple disciplinary views of wayfinding and navigation by humans and other animals gives the volume a distinctly different content from other available books.

Keywords

cognitive map; internal representation; navigation; navigation; path integration; place cells; wayfinding.
                PSYCOLOQUY CALL FOR BOOK REVIEWERS

    Below is the Precis of "Wayfinding Behavior: Cognitive mapping and
    other spatial processes" (685 lines). This book has been selected
    for multiple review in PSYCOLOQUY. If you wish to submit a formal
    book review please write to psyc@pucc.princeton.edu indicating what
    expertise you would bring to bear on reviewing the book if you were
    selected to review it.

    (If you have never reviewed for PSYCOLOQUY or Behavioral & Brain
    Sciences before, it would be helpful if you could also append a
    copy of your CV to your inquiry.) If you are selected as one of the
    reviewers and do not have a copy of the book, you will be sent a
    copy of the book directly by the publisher (please let us know if
    you have a copy already). Reviews may also be submitted without
    invitation, but all reviews will be refereed. The author will reply
    to all accepted reviews.

    Full Psycoloquy book review instructions at:

    http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/psyc.html
    http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/psycoloquy/

    Relevant excerpts:

    Psycoloquy reviews are of the book not the Precis. Length should be
    about 200 lines [c. 1800 words], with a short abstract (about 50
    words), an indexable title, and reviewer's full name and
    institutional address, email and Home Page URL. All references that
    are electronically accessible should also have URLs.

I. INTRODUCTION

1. The use of maps in forms ranging from dirt drawings to stone carvings, from rice paper scrolls to Automobile Association trip-tiks, from topographic map sheets to disposable tactile strip maps appears to be a cultural universal (Uttal 1997). Maps both record what is known and remembered about an environment and act as wayfinding aids. In the absence of these artifacts, humans and other animals rely on internal representations or stored memories of experienced environments. It is frequently assumed that these stored memories, now commonly referred to as cognitive maps or internal spatial representations, are used to guide travel. Cognitive maps are always there: they cannot be left at home, torn to pieces by fractious children, rendered apart and pieced together incorrectly, so that map reading errors result in a traveler becoming lost. But they do have their problems.

2. The idea that animals also possess internal spatial representations resulted in Tolman's first identification of the term cognitive map. Rather than state that animals, particularly the rats that took short cuts through his mazes stored spatial information as a map, Tolman used the term metaphorically. In other words, he suggested that the animals used in his studies appeared to be able to use spatial information as though the places they remembered were recorded in a maplike manner. For decades, controversy has raged over whether animals do have cognitive maps or if they have other forms of internal spatial representations that allow them to behave as if they were being guided by a map-reading operation. After decades of research in zoology, other biological sciences, and experimental psychology, in particular, various alternatives have been posed to account for successful animal travel behavior. Many have argued that the practice of returning directly to home after a meandering search for food by many nonhuman species indicates that the species did continuous spatial updating, then returned home by a procedure well known to ocean shipping or aircraft pilots the process of dead reckoning. Called path integration, this process enables a traveler to constantly update their current position with respect to an origin without recording details of the path already followed. Because there is no need for a memory trace of the path, route retrace may be difficult or impossible. The need of many foragers who are partly responsible for feeding other members of their species to return home with food, appears to make the short cut (or 'beeline' or 'crow-fly') return trip the more reasonable option. If food is consumed at the spot on which it is found, safety considerations might dictate an immediate shortest-distance return.

3. Flying insects and avian species appear to use landmarks, sun compasses, magnetic compasses, or other celestial guides to help them with migratory and shorter-distance travel. Naturally enough, questions have arisen as to whether the landmarks used are captured as a perspectively viewed retinal image, or whether their configuration or layout is either stored and recalled in sequence as a route is followed, or represented as layouts or configurations similar to a survey (or overview-based) representation of a large-scale and complex space.

4. Despite the existence of these two vigorous research areas, focused on nonhuman and human travel respectively, until recently there have been few deliberate attempts to combine the two literatures. This lack of attention provided the rationale for a small seminar funded by the Borchard Foundation at the Chateau de la Bretesche in July 1996. The purpose of the meeting was to bring together researchers from both the human and nonhuman research domains who had specialized in navigation or wayfinding behavior and who were familiar with the idea of cognitive mapping and the potential role that cognitive maps might play in wayfinding behaviors. As the guests of the foundation's director, William F. Behling and his wife, Betty, at the Chateau de la Bretesche, nine contributors to this volume first presented position statements on the relationships between cognitive maps and wayfinding in humans and other species. To supplement this group's expertise, other scientists were invited to add chapters to the book.

5. The term 'cognitive maps' is used throughout this book to refer to the internal spatial representation of environmental information. Its use varies, from the metaphorical ('as if' the information was stored in maplike format), to a hypothetical construct.

6. The term 'spatial representation' is also used throughout the book. This might be regarded as a shorthand notation for the organization of components of spatial knowledge or other partly investigative processes (e.g., neurophysiological structures and place cells, cell assemblies, phase sequences). The term also can be used metaphorically, involving an 'as if' quality, particularly when referring to purported maplike properties of representations. It has also been used as an intervening variable in which it is interpreted as a 'note' attached to an economical grouping of measured variables in a statement of functional relations between other measured variable.

7. Structurally, this book is divided into four sections, ranging from wayfinding and cognitive mapping in humans operating in different scenarios, to examinations of special human navigation processes (e.g. without sight), to studies of wayfinding by various non-human species, and the neurobiological bases of environmental knowledge acquisition and use. Each section is now summarized in turn.

II. SECTION I: HUMAN COGNITIVE MAPS AND WAYFINDING

8. This first section explores the strong theoretical and empirical links between cognitive maps (or the internal representation of environmental information); the cognitive mapping process itself; the internal manipulation of information in the form of spatial choice and decision making, and the directed acts of human wayfinding through simple or complex environments. The evidence is clear and overwhelming that human wayfinding is directed and motivated, and follows sets of procedural rules whose content and structure are the focus of much ongoing research. The consensus is clear: humans acquire, code, store, decode, and use cognitive information as part of their navigation and wayfinding activities. Although over the centuries they have developed numerous ways of supplementing personally stored environmental information (e.g., maps, written descriptions, and various forms of image representations), it appears that humans rely on personal cognitions to make many spatial decisions, and to guide their movement behavior. There is evidence that internal representations and their externalizations (spatial products) do not necessarily match well, and that the existence of fragmented, incomplete, or distorted cognitive maps appears to account for many behaviors that might otherwise be labeled as spatially irrational.

9. The purpose of this part of the book is to examine sets of concepts deemed relevant to both human wayfinding and cognitive mapping. There are two chapters by geographers (Golledge, and Stern and Portugali), and two by psychologists (Allen and Garling). Although some disciplinary perspectives are evident, there is much overlap and common concern. The first two chapters, by Golledge and Allen (respectively), provide overviews and summaries of theories and concepts relevant throughout the entire book. The following chapters by Garling, and Stern and Portugali have a tighter focus: Garling emphasizes the sequential spatial choice processes so important to human wayfinding, and Stern and Portugali emphasize decision making in urban environments, the complex scenarios in which most humans live and interact. All four chapters contain examples of relevant research.

10. In the first chapter, Golledge reviews critical definitions relating to cognitive maps and wayfinding. He provides an overview of the role of cognitive mapping in human wayfinding and describes the processes of acquiring and storing spatial information about large-scale complex environments. Further, he discusses how humans record and represent environmental knowledge. The role played by landmarks and routes in anchoring knowledge and in wayfinding is examined, and the differences between path following and route-based environmental learning are explored. Errors commonly related to encoding, decoding and internally manipulating cognized spatial data are highlighted. Wayfinding by humans in contexts other than with landmark usage is also examined, and an elaboration of errors commonly found in human wayfinding follows. Throughout, ties are made to treatments of similar problems in later chapters that focus on the nonhuman domains of internal spatial representations and wayfinding.

11. In the second chapter, Allen provides insights into the nature of spatial abilities and the role they play in cognitive mapping and wayfinding procedures. He places emphasis on the concept of individual differences in spatial cognition and in behavior. Allen argues that the scientific literature in psychology and geography contains a vast number of studies concerned with spatial abilities and a growing body of research on wayfinding, although little has been done to establish the relevance of the former for the latter. Thus the question of why some individuals are better than others at wayfinding has been difficult to address. Allen suggests that a potentially informative way to think of wayfinding is to differentiate between wayfinding tasks and wayfinding means. Tasks include traveling to a previously known destination, exploration with the purpose of returning home, and traveling to a novel destination. Means include oriented search, following a continuously marked trail, piloting (between landmarks), habitual locomotion, path integration, and reference to a cognitive map. Spatial abilities in the past have been examined from psychometric, information processing, developmental, and neuropsychological perspectives. Allen suggests that broad fami1ies of abilities involved in the identification of manipulable objects, those involved in anticipating the trajectory and speed of moving objects, and those involved in supporting oriented travel within large-scale environments summarize the dominant research themes. He implies there is considerable utility associated with the concept of interactive common resources for cognitive and perceptual-motor tasks. The result of the use of spatial abilities is support-oriented travel, but they also serve as a resource for acquiring additional environmental knowledge. Cognitive maps are considered as knowledge of places and cognitive mapping includes rules for establishing spatial relations among such places.

12. Next, Garling discusses human information processing in sequential spatial choice, which summarizes the essential acts involved in wayfinding. He begins with the premise that human locomotion in space is goal-directed. Spatial orientation and navigation are, therefore, primarily means of monitoring travel plans. Travel plans are developed prior to initiating movement. The chapter focuses on the formation of travel plans and their consequent execution. Such planning entails spatial choices that are multiattribute, sequential, and stated. He summarizes research on how people process information when solving the traveling salesman problem (i.e., finding the shortest distance between an origin and a set of destinations that might be sequentially visited). He details research on how time and priority are traded off against spatial attributes in sequential spatial choices.

13. Stern and Portugali next examine the relationship between environmental cognition and decision making in urban navigation. They define urban navigation as a sequential process of decision making concerning route choice. They claim that traditionally many choice situations are described by a 'black-box approach', which does not specify choice rules but rather deals only with the relationship between input and output variables. In most of these models a cognitive explanatory mechanism of the choice process is missing. Their chapter presents two complementary conceptual frameworks as possible ways to solve this problem. The first is the inter-representational network (IRN), and the second is decision field theory (DFT). It is suggested that both frameworks can explain the dynamics and high variability in the choices of persons navigating in urban environments.

14. In the exploration of human wayfinding and its various components as illustrated in this first section, the importance of individual differences, those between males and females, and variations according to one's spatial abilities are reviewed.

III. SECTION II: PERCEPTUAL AND COGNITIVE PROCESSING OF ENVIRONMENTAL

INFORMATION

15. In this part, three chapters explore cognitive processes and human navigation in a variety of contexts, including an extensive investigation of path integration by humans covering wayfinding without vision; updating an object's orientation and location during nonvisual navigation; exploring the geometrical constraints and calibration of action-representation couplings, and relating perceptual processes to various navigation requirements. Focusing primarily on aspects of human perception and cognition with respect to wayfinding, these authors explore nontraditional domains to show the versatility of relevant theories and concepts. Although vision is accepted as the most important spatial sense, there is no doubt that blind or vision-impaired humans can become competent independent travelers using simple cognitive processes and aids such as the white cane, guide dog, or a variety of recently developed auditory navigational aids.

16. In the first of these chapters (chapter 5) Loomis, Golledge, Klatzky, and Philbeck discuss the process of human navigation by path integration, a process that until recently was recognized more in the nonhuman domain. They begin by clearly defining two types of processes influential in wayfinding piloting and path integration. The recent literature is replete with misconceptions of the nature of these processes, but little is left in doubt following their clear and comprehensive discussion. Navigation by humans, animals, and machines is accomplished using two distinct methods. Piloting is the determination of current position and orientation using landmark information in conjunction with a map, either external or internal. Path integration is the updating of position and orientation on the basis of velocity and acceleration information about self-movement. The chapter begins with a consideration of a number of models of path integration. Following is a review of the empirical research on human path integration, with a focus on controlled experimental investigations. Such investigations have been carried out using two distinct tasks: return-to-origin after the passively guided traverse of an outbound path, and perceptually directed action, whereby the person sees or hears a target and then, with the target extinguished, attempts to indicate its position by actively locomoting toward it or by pointing in its direction during locomotion that passes by the target.

17. In Chapter 6, Amorim discusses a neurocognitive approach to human navigation. He suggests that human navigation is viewed as a result of the interplay of neurocognitive functions. Spatial updating and frames of reference constitute the two concepts of maximum interest in this work. He provides experimental evidence on the role of reference frames in computing locations in space, as well as on the effect of two processing modes for the updating of an object's location and orientation. Amorim uses an information-processing approach (commonly used in cognitive psychology) in an effort to understand human processes of updating an object's location and orienting it with respect to a bounding frame of reference. To localize a person in the environment as well as localize an object the environment contains, Amorim suggests that the acquisition, coding, and integration of sensory information (both perceptual and representational) are necessary. Building on the model of visuo-spatial cognition proposed by Kosslyn (1991), Amorim offers two studies; one investigates the role of reference frames in computing locations in space, whereas the other compares two processing modes for the updating of an object's location and orientation in space. In interpreting the results of these experiments he evaluates the neurocognitive approach to the study of the pathological causes of topographical disorientation.

18. In chapter 7, Rieser examines action-representation couplings, focusing in particular on the geometrical constraints on such calibrations. He argues that perception and action are coupled, so that motoric actions result in dependable changes in the actor's perspective. For example, during locomotion the structure of an actor's perspective visibly rotates and translates in directions and at rates that fit with the geometry and rate of locomotion. This coupling provides a chance for perceptual-motor learning. While walking with vision, people learn the covariation of optical (and possibly nonoptical) flow and afferent-efferent input associated with the biomechanical activities of walking. This learning, in turn, provides the basis for the coupling of representation and action. Representation is coupled with action in working memory in analogous ways. When acting without vision, people are knowledgeable about the resulting changes in their perspective. So for example, after viewing their surroundings and then walking without vision, people are able to keep up to date on the changing self-to-object distances and directions relative to their remembered surroundings.

IV. SECTION III: WAYFINDING AND COGNITIVE MAPS IN NONHUMAN SPECIES

19. In previous sections we focused on humans, in whom cognitive processing is well established, but the tie to navigation and wayfinding is not strongly defined. In this section the authors focus on navigation and wayfinding by nonhuman species, in which the presence of cognitive maps is being strongly debated. In these chapters, biological and ecological scientists examine wayfinding and discuss the possibility that different species have and use cognitive maps.

20. Etienne, Maurer, Georgakopoulos, and Griffin begin (in chapter 8) with a review of the significance of dead reckoning or path integration and landmark use in the representation of space. In many ways this provides a view that complements chapter 5 by Loomis et al., which presents a human navigator's view of the same process. In particular they examine suggestions that dead reckoning (which does not involve learning an environment) seems more dominant in nonhumans, whereas landmark-guided movement may be more dominant in humans. The problem of how different species combine the systems in wayfinding is examined in great detail. Drawing on examples from their group's work with small mammals, Etienne et al. suggest that animals may well have a simple cognitive map that helps their memory for routes and places (such as sources of food or food storage areas).

21. But not all animals may have such cognitive maps. In this chapter, Etienne et al. begin from the viewpoint that spatial representation as defined originally by Tolman (1948) and more recently by O'Keefe and Nadel (1978) refers to a high level of spatial information processing. They use the term cognitive map to imply that a subject organizes the familiar environment as a system of interconnected places and that it applies a set of transformation rules to this system, which may consist of a limited number of complementary operations (such as those hypothesized by Piaget 1937), or that optimize goal-directed movements. Thus whether human or nonhuman, a subject must be able to pilot and perform new route selection before being credited with possessing a cognitive map.

22. The authors define piloting in terms of planning and performing a goal-directed path by deducing an itinerary from the memorized spatial relations between a goal and a traveler's current position, while new route performance implies an ability to select the most economical alternative path (including shortest path and shortcuts) in both familiar and unfamiliar settings. If a cognitive map alone is used, then piloting and path following must take place without either the use of beacons or reference to external landmarks. Etienne et al. argue that the general literature has yet to yield convincing evidence that spatial knowledge reaches this degree of coherence in species other than primates. They suggest using the term spatial representation, or more precisely, the representation of locomotive space, for their work with nonprimate animal species. Thus their chapter directly addresses the question of the universality of cognitive maps by suggesting that whereas spatial representation may be universal, cognitive maps may develop only in a limited number of species. They then point out that the attribution of specific systems of representation to different species poses severe problems. They argue that if one ascribes to an animal or a young child particular forms of spatial representation, inevitably one begins by analyzing subjects' behavior in specific functional contexts to see how observed behaviors fit certain aspects of the environment.

23. The authors make a strong statement that all sedentary species adapt their locomotor behavior to relevant features in the spatial environment in order to reach their goals without getting lost. Thus the observed correspondence between behavior and functionally meaningful aspects of the environment gives insights into what the traveler knows about the environment and thus how the external world is represented or modeled. The authors then examine the process of dead reckoning, with and without the possible use of ancillary landmarks. They report that many theories of navigation emphasize that dead reckoning (path integration) plays a significant role in spatial representation and wayfinding across the entire animal kingdom from insects and other invertebrates to mammals (Gallistel 1990). Then, building on this fascinating introduction, the authors examine the role of dead reckoning in the representation of space in a comparative perspective, including hymenopterans and rodents. They describe how insects and mammals use dead reckoning as current route-based information and how they use landmark-place associations as long-term location-based references. They then consider how the species previously mentioned represents space on the basis of route-based and location-based information, and on the interaction between these two categories of references.

24. In chapter 9, Judd, Dale, and Collett examine the fine structure of view-based navigation in insects. They begin by asserting that insects learn landmarks as two-dimensional views. These views are highly dependent on vantage points, so that even over a relatively short section of a foraging trip, the insect's view of a nearby landmark will change appreciably. Insects simplify the problems of using such retinotopic views for navigation in a number of ways. For example, bees and wasps restrict the range of directions in which they approach a familiar place so that they capture roughly the same sequence of retinal images from visit to visit (i.e.. approach from the same perspective view). They are guided into the vicinity of the goal by aiming at a nearby beacon landmark. Because of changes in image size and shape, a single stored view of the beacon is unlikely to allow the insect to recognize it over the whole range of possible approaches. In addition, the authors claim that wood ants are shown to take several 'snapshots' of a beacon at different distances in the early stages of learning a new environment. Once close to a beacon, the insect relinquishes fixation either to approach another beacon or to approach the goal. This transition is achieved by linking a stereotyped action to a frontally stored view of the beacon. By this means the insect can acquire a standard view of the next beacon or arrive at a point close enough to the goal to allow image matching of the goal itself or the nearest landmark. The goal is then pinpointed by moving so that the image on the retina matches the view of nearby landmarks. The authors go on to suggest that there is surprising similarity in the motor constraints and landmark strategies of real insects and those of simple simulated 'creatures' they have 'evolved' artificially. Again, the parallel between human and non-human species stands out.

25. Moving from ground-based animals and low-flying insects to birds, the internationally acclaimed team of Wolfgang and Roswitha Wiltschko (chapter 10) discuss compass orientation and basic elements in avian orientation and navigation. Birds face orientation tasks in two behavioral contexts: homing and migration. Because of the long distances involved in migration, birds must establish contact to their goal indirectly via an external reference. Three such mechanisms have been described: a magnetic compass based on the field lines of the geomagnetic field and two compass mechanisms based on celestial cues, namely a sun compass and a star compass. To use a compass, birds must first determine the compass course leading to their destination. For homing, experimental evidence indicates that experienced pigeons can derive the home course from site-specific information obtained at the starting point of the return flight. Their ability to do this even at distant, unfamiliar sites has led to the concept of the navigational 'map', which is a directionally oriented representation of the distribution of environmental gradients within the home region. It can be extrapolated beyond the range of direct experience. Birds determine their home course by comparing local values of these gradients with the home values. The 'map' is based on individual experience.

26. During an early phase in life, young pigeons derive their home course from directional information collected during the outward journey. On spontaneous flights, they record prominent landmarks and changes in navigational factors and combine this information with the direction flown to form the navigational map. Once the map is established, it is preferentially used, because it permits the correction of errors. The navigational map is a cognitive map because it allows novel routes; it differs from cognitive maps discussed for other animals by the size of the area covered and by including continuous factors like gradients. In migration, birds must reach a distant region of the world. The course leading to this goal area is constant; the birds possess genetically coded information on their migratory direction. The conversion of this information into an actual compass course requires external references, which are provided by celestial rotation and by the geomagnetic field. Celestial rotation indicates a reference direction away from the celestial pole, whereas the magnetic field defines a specific deviation from this course, resulting in the population-specific migration course. Both types of cue continue to interact during migratory flights. Depending on the nature of the orientation tasks, birds make use of innate information or of individual learning processes. In both strategies, however, external references provided by compass mechanisms are essential components.

27. Thinus-Blanc and Gaunet (chapter 11) discuss the cognitive map as an internal representation of an environment where places and their spatial relationships (such as angles and distances) are charted. This notion has been extensively criticized in the past by Thinus-Blanc because the expression is antinomic and can easily lead to misunderstanding. The authors point out that 'cognitive' refers to dynamic processes and 'map' refers to a static picture of the real world. To this extent, the term cognitive mapping is functionally more correct. Internal spatial representations are said to be useful for orienting in a given environment just as they contribute to the organization of new spatial information as it is accrued. Thus Thinus-Blanc and Gaunet argue that spatial representation may be viewed as maps of the environment but more appropriately should be viewed as cognitive or active information seeking structures. They draw on data from animal and human studies and related theoretical work to support this hypothesis.

V. SECTION IV: THE NEURAL AND COMPUTATIONAL BASES OF WAYFINDING AND

COGNITIVE MAPS

28. In this part cognitive neuroscientists Nadel (University of Arizona) and Berthoz (Laboratoire de Physiologie de la Perception et de l'Action, College de France) respectively examine the neural bases of wayfinding and cognitive maps, and computer scientist Chown (Bowdoin College) discusses their implications for computation and artificial intelligence-based travel.

29. In chapter 12, Nadel provides an overview of the neural mechanisms of spatial orientation and wayfinding. He suggests that work on the neural bases of wayfinding in mammals has intensified in recent years, building on the discovery of place neurons in the hippocampus. The cognitive map theory of hippocampal functioning, first put forward by O'Keefe and Nadel in 1978, suggests that this brain structure is the core of an extensive neural system subserving the representation and use of information about the spatial environment. Nadel argues that evidence supporting this theory comes primarily from brain lesion and neurophysiological recording studies. The former showed that damage in the hippocampus system invariably impairs the ability of animals and humans to learn about, remember, and navigate through environments, while the latter show that neurons in this system code for location, direction, and distance, thereby providing the elements needed for a mapping system. Current work in this area focuses on which stimuli control the activity of these neural elements, and how the system is used in behavior. He cites the fact that the roles of external and internal sources of information are under active investigation.

30. In the next chapter, Berthoz and his associates examine the neural bias of spatial memory during locomotion. This chapter addresses the question of the mechanisms that underlie the capacity to memorize routes and to use this spatial memory for guiding and steering of locomotion. A review is presented of several paradigms used in their laboratory to study this question. First, some previous studies, which have shown that vestibular information about head rotation and translation can be used by the brain to estimate distances are reviewed. Berthoz et al. claim that such use has been shown by the vestibular memory contingent 'saccade task', both in normal subjects and in neurological patients. Second, some recent experiments that use the task of walking along a triangular path with or without vision are described. During this task, head position and velocity are measured by video-computerized techniques. Two main results have been obtained: (1) They have discovered that the head anticipates the body movement during walks around a corner: this anticipation also exists in darkness, suggesting that the orienting system is driven by an internal representation of the trajectory and that the brain uses a strategy of guiding locomotion by gaze (go where you look) even in darkness. (2) When vestibular-deficient patients perform the task, they seem to control the total distance but not the direction, suggesting a dissociation between the control of distance and direction in this locomotor pointing task. They also describe a second paradigm of circular locomotion, during which subjects were asked to walk around a circular path with or without vision. Here again, the measure of the kinematics parameters of head movement indicates both an anticipation of head direction and a dissociation between the control of distance and direction, and provides clarification of the frequently misinterpreted concepts of course and heading. Finally, they review a number of recent results which may lead to an understanding of the neural basis of both anticipation and the role of vestibular cues in the steering of locomotion.

31. In the final chapter, Chown discusses error tolerance and generalization in cognitive maps. He asserts that human cognitive maps are not precise, complete, nor necessarily accurate. Because navigation is so important in everyday life, it is not easy to understand why humans have evolved an internal representation of space that appears to have such basic flaws. The theme of this chapter is that it is exactly the sketchy nature of human cognitive maps that make them such a powerful tool for navigation. There is growing evidence from artificial intelligence and robotics that in real environments, useful representations cannot be achieved without sacrificing completeness and precision. Further, it can be shown that the sketchy nature of cognitive maps more naturally lends itself to error tolerance and generalization than would be the case with alternative structures. Cognitive maps may be sketchy but the information they do store is usually sufficient for human needs. The relationship between human needs and how cognitive maps encode information is discussed in a proposed model called PLAN.

VI. FINAL COMMENT:

32. The more we know about how humans or other species can navigate, wayfind, sense, and record and use spatial information, the more effective will be the building of future guidance systems, and the more natural it will be for humans to understand and control those systems. The question of which of the many cognitive mapping, navigational, or wayfinding procedures and behaviors should be taken as the role model for future systems remains unanswered at this stage. Knowing the advantages and disadvantages, the strengths and the shortcomings, the idiosyncrasies and the universals of spatial knowledge acquisition and storage and wayfinding behavior can only lead to the development of systems that are as endemic as path integration, as powerful as cognitive mapping, and as anchored as landmark usage, and that possess the versatility to handle both view-centered and object-centered modes of recording or experiencing new environments.

REFERENCES:

Gallistel, C. R. (1990). The organization of learning. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Kosslyn, S. M. (1991). 'A cognitive neuroscience of visual cognition: Further developments.' In R. H. Logie & M. Denis (Eds.) Mental Images in Human Cognition (pp.351-381). Amsterdam: Elsevier Science Publishers.

O'Keefe, J., & Nadel, L. (1978). The hippocampus as a cognitive map. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Piaget, J. (1937). La construction du reel chez l'enfant. Paris: Delachaux et Niestl, Neuchtel.

Tolman, E. C. (1948). 'Cognitive maps in rats and men.' Psychological Review, 55, 189-208.

Uttal, D.H. (1997, April) 'Seeing the big picture: Children's mental representation of spatial information acquired from maps.' Paper presented at the 93rd annual meeting of The Association of American Geographers, Ft. Worth, TX.

    List of author names with chapter titles and page numbers:

    1: Human Wayfinding and Cognitive Maps, 5-46.  Reginald G. Golledge
    <golledge@geog.ucsb.edu>

    2: Spatial Abilities, Cognitive Maps, and Wayfinding: Bases for
    Individual Differences in Spatial Cognition and Behavior, 46-81.
    Gary L. Allen <allen@garnet.cla.sc.edu>

    3: Human Information Processing in Sequential Spatial Choice, 81-99.
    Tommy Garling <tommy.garling@psy.gu.se>

    4: Environmental Cognition Decision Makaing in Urban Navigation,
    99-121.  Eliahu Stern <eli@river.bgu.ac.il> Juval Portugali
    <juval@ccsg.tau.ac.il>

    PART II PERCEPTUAL AND COGNITIVE PROCESSING OF ENVIRONMENTAL
    INFORMATION

    5: Human Navigation by Path Integration, 125-152.  Jack M. Loomis
    <loomis@psych.ucsb.edu> Roberta L. Klatzky <klatzky@cmu.edu> Reginald
    G. Golledge <golledge@geog.ucsb.edu> John W. Philbeck
    <philbeck@andrew.cmu.edu>

    6: A Neurocognitive Approach to Human Navigation, 152-168.  Michel-Ange
    Amorim <amorim@ccr.jussieu.fr>

    7: Dynamic Spatial Orientationa and the Coupling of Representation and
    Action, 168-191.  John J. Rieser <rieserjj@ctrvax.vanderbilt.edu>

    PART III WAYFINDING AND COGNITIVE MAPS IN NONHUMAN SPECIES

    8: Dead Reckoning (Path Integration), Landmarks, and
    Representation of Space in a Comparative Perspective, 197-229.  Ariane
    S. Etienne <etienne@uni2a.unige.ch> Roland Maurer
    <Maurerr@uni2a.unige.ch> Josephine Georgakopoulos
    <georgako@uni2a.unige.ch> Andrea Griffin

    9: On the Fine Structure of View-Based Navigation in Insects, 229-259.
    Simon P. D. Judd <s.p.d.judd@sussex.ac.uk> Kyran Dale
    <kyrand@cogs.sussex.ac.uk> Thomas S. Collett <t.s.collett@sussex.ac.uk>

    10: Compass Orientation as a Basic Element in Avian Orientation and
    Navigation, 259-294.  Roswitha Wiltschko, Wolfgang Wiltschko
    <wiltschko@zoology.uni-frankfurt.d400.de>

    11: Spatial Processing in Animals and Humans: The Organizing
    Function of Representations for Information Gathering, 294-309.
    Catherine Thinus-Blanc <thinus@lnf.cnrs-mrs.fr> Florence Gaunet
    <gaunet@cdf-lppa.in2p3.fr>

    PART IV THE NEURAL AND COMPUTATIONAL BASES OF WAYFINDING AND
    COGNITIVE MAPS

    12: Neural Mechanisms of Spatial Orientation and Wayfinding: An
    Overview, 313-328.  Lynn Nadel <nadel@u.arizona.edu>

    13: Dissociation between Distance and Direction during Locomotor
    Navigation, 328-349.  Alain Berthz <aber@ccr.jussieu.fr>
    Michel-Ange Amorim <amorim@ccr.jussieu.fr>

    14: Error Tolerance and Generalization in Cognitive Maps:
    Performance without Precision 349.  Eric Chown <echown@bowdoin.edu>

    REFERENCES 371 CONTRIBUTORS 415 INDEX 419


Volume: 10 (next, prev) Issue: 036 (next, prev) Article: 1 (next prev first) Alternate versions: ASCII Summary
Topic:
Article: