Spatial Mental Representation: Implications for Navigation System Design

This chapter discusses cognitive issues about the use of maps and spatial orientation in the environment and possible implications of research in the literature of spatial cognition for map and navigation learning in STEAM. It first clarifies the tradition of research in spatial cognition, behavior, and thinking and discusses the concept of spatial representation in relation to symbolic and geometric understanding of maps and the acquisition of spatial knowledge in the environment. Then the chapter looks at the difficulties that students have with maps in terms of projection, scaling, and symbolization and discusses the possibility of instructional intervention, taking the degree of iconicity of spatial representations and the alignment of maps with the surrounding environments into account. Concerning spatial orientation, cognitive demands that configurational learning in large-scale environments poses and the distortions typically observed in people’s spatial knowledge and judgments are discussed, in particular the theoretical and practical implications of the existence of large individual differences. Finally, the chapter explains the manners in which people identify and communicate their locations in the environment and considers problems and prospects of spatial awareness in the age of advanced geospatial information and technology.

There has been a long tradition of wayfinding and orienteering studies in humans but these have mostly neglected possible age-related differences in navigation. This field of inquiry is experiencing something of a resurgence of interest due to the development of VR technology which has brought the systematic study of large scale navigation into the laboratory and into the MRI scanning environment. Empirical studies to date identify navigation as an aspect of cognition that is vulnerable to the aging process. Functional and structural neuroimaging studies in humans suggest that age-related changes in the brain’s “navigation circuit” may underlie these behavioral age differences. Older adults also adopt unique spatial strategies and knowledge of these strategy preferences could enlighten both basic science research in spatial cognition and also inform the development of age-specific technological assistance that may extend functional independence of older adults into later life.

Everyday life unfolds in both space and time, with our spatial experiences playing a central role in our interactions with the world. To grasp human cognition, it s essential to understand how we perceive spatial relationships and tackle spatio-temporal challenges. Over the past few decades, research in spatial cognition has made significant strides, particularly in developing computational methods for knowledge representation and reasoning. This special issue explores various approaches to formalizing, implementing, and automating solutions for spatial problems. In this introduction, we provide a current literature review to contextualize the three contributions featured in this issue.

Navigation is essential to life, and it is cognitively complex, drawing on abilities such as prospective and situated planning, spatial memory, location recognition, and real-time decision-making. In many cases, day-to-day navigation is embedded in a social context where cognition and behavior are shaped by others, but the great majority of existing research in spatial cognition has focused on individuals. The two studies we report here contribute to our understanding of social wayfinding, assessing the performance of paired and individual navigators on a real-world wayfinding task in which they were instructed to minimize time and distance traveled. In the first study, we recruited 30 pairs of friends (familiar dyads); in the second, we recruited 30 solo participants (individuals). We compare the two studies to the results of an earlier study of 30 pairs of strangers (unfamiliar dyads). We draw out differences in performance with respect to spatial, social, and cognitive considerations. Of the three conditions, solo participants were least successful in reaching the destination accurately on their initial attempt. Friends traveled more efficiently than either strangers or individuals. Working with a partner also appeared to lend confidence to wayfinders: dyads of either familiarity type were more persistent than individuals in the navigation task, even after encountering challenges or making incorrect attempts. Route selection was additionally impacted by route complexity and unfamiliarity with the study area. Navigators explicitly used ease of remembering as a planning criterion, and the resulting differences in route complexity likely influenced success during enacted navigation.

The classical psychophysical approach to human perception has been to study isolated aspects of perception using well-controlled and strongly simplified laboratory stimuli. This so-called cue reduction technique has successfully led to the identification of numerous perceptual mechanisms, and has in many cases guided the uncoverage of neural correlates (see chapters elsewhere in this volume). Its limitations, however, lie in the almost complete ignorance of the intimate relationship among action, perception, and the environment in which we live. Real world situations are so different from the stimuli used in classical psychophysics and the context in which they are presented that applying laboratory results to daily life situations often becomes impractical, if not impossible. At the Max-PlanckInstitute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen, we pursue a behavioral approach to human action and perception that proves especially well-suited for studying more complex cognitive functions, such as object recognition and spatial cognition. The recent availability of high-fidelity “virtual reality” environments enables us to provide subjects a level of sensory realism and dynamic sensory feedback that approaches their experiences in the real world. At the same time, we can keep the ultimate control over all stimulus aspects that are required by the rules of psychophysics. In this chapter, we take a closer look at these developments in spatial cognition research and present results from several different experimental studies that we have conducted using this approach.

Although there is a large potential overlap between neuroscience and architecture, the studies bridging these fields are rare and newly emerging. Moreover, a gap is observed between the constructs, terminologies and research methods of architecture and neuroscience. In order to alleviate these problems, this study investigates main research themes and developments in spatial cognition research over the past two decades on the basis of the author keywords of published articles. Vosviewer© bibliometric analysis software was utilized to conduct keyword co-occurrence analysis, keyword clustering, and timeline analysis of keywords and current research on spatial cognition is discussed accordingly. The paper also reviews existing research at the intersection of neuroscience and architecture and comments on how this nexus could evolve in the future. It is concluded that embodied spatial cognition and affordances of architectural design provide a robust framework to guide further studies in this track.

Our spatial mental representations allow us to give refined descriptions of the environment in terms of the relative locations and distances between objects and landmarks. In this study, we investigated the effects of familiarity with the everyday environment, in terms of frequency of exploration and mode of transportation, on categorical and coordinate spatial relations, on young and elderly participants, controlling for socio-demographic factors. Participants were tested with a general anamnesis, a neuropsychological assessment, measures of explorations and the Landmark Positioning on a Map task. The results showed: (a) a modest difference in performance with categorical spatial relations; (b) a larger difference in coordinate spatial relations; (c) a significant moderating effect of age on the relationship between familiarity and spatial relations, with a stronger relation among the elderly than the young. Ceteris paribus, the role of direct experience with exploring their hometown on spatial mental representations appeared to be more important in the elderly than in the young. This advantage appears to make the elderly wiser and likely protects them from the detrimental effects of aging on spatial mental representations.

Spatial representations play a fundamental role in navigation, decision-making, and overall interaction with our environments. Understanding how individuals construct and use them holds significant importance in spatial cognition research, and even bears practical implications for urban planning as it can explain how we interact with the spaces we inhabit. In large urban areas, transit maps stand as prominent visual aids, guiding people through public transportation systems. These maps, while designed for navigational purposes, may influence how individuals perceive and represent their cities. For instance, Vertesi (Social Studies of Science 38:09-35, 2008) showed through a series of interviews including a "sketch mapping" phase, that London Tube Map seems to structure residents' spatial representation of their city. However, thorough quantitative research on this subject have not been carried out yet. Two experimental studies have been conducted to demonstrate how residents' representations of metropolitan areas closely resemble the schematic representations of their public transport networks. First, we show that residents of Greater Paris-public and private transport users alike-plot city landmarks in a layout more closely resembling that of the Parisian transit map than the geographical map. Next, we asked Greater Berlin, London and Paris residents to place landmarks of their cities on different map backgrounds. A similar procedure was followed for landmarks from an unknown city, after a dedicated learning phase. For known cities, the sketch maps produced were closer to transit maps than to the geographical ones, although less so if the test map background presented topographical elements (e.g., rivers, etc.). For learnt cities, participants' sketch maps were almost exclusively dependent on the map provided during the learning phase. These results suggest that familiarity with transit maps has a direct impact on the metric properties of spatial representation in memory, a phenomenon we propose to call the 'schema effect'.

Square Grid Cells Improve the Accuracy of Distance Estimations in Topographic MapsIn many everyday scenarios of orientation and navigation, it is inevitable to have a highly accurate distance knowledge. The acquisition of distance knowledge is a common example of map use. As cartographic communication usually depends on graphic symbols, the perception and learning of map information can be influenced by distortion mechanisms. To correct such distortions, foundational research in cartography and spatial cognition have made some design suggestions based on superordinate graphical structures. Some recent studies show that salient road networks and, especially, map grids can help to correct spatial distortion tendencies in memory. These graphic elements regionalize a map surface and serve as space-referencing units. Effects were reported in recall and recognition tasks. The present article includes an experimental study based on topographic maps. The results of the study provide evidence that square grid cells improve the performance in estimating longer distances.

While linear covariance analysis is widely used for navigation system design and analysis, it is often overlooked as a tool for closed-loop guidance navigation and control (GN&C) system design and analysis. This article presents an overview of the techniques and methods required to develop a linear covariance analysis tool for a close-loop GN&C system. Then, using a simple nonlinear closed-loop GN&C problem as a guide, the capabilities of linear covariance analysis for the design and analysis of closed-loop systems are demonstrated. It is shown that linear covariance can be accurately applied to a closed-loop system with time-to-go guidance, dead-reckoning navigation, and a Kalman filter for state estimation. The accuracy and efficiency of linear covariance analysis is shown by direct comparison to Monte Carlo analysis results, and the value of linear covariance analysis is highlighted by presenting several analysis capabilities that are often required in the design and analysis of closed-loop GN&C systems. It is also shown how the efficiency of linear covariance enables new design methodologies, one of which is presented in this article, that would otherwise be prohibitive with Monte Carlo analysis.

Although not previously addressed by researchers of spatial cognition or affect, the combination of spatial and affective information is essential for many approach and avoidance behaviors, and thus for survivaL We provide the first evidence that through incidental experience, people form representations that capture correlations between affective and spatial information. Participants were able to do so even when the correlation was weak, they were not told to look for the correlation, and the stimuli varied on multiple other dimensions besides valence. In addition, people were more sensitive to the presented correlation when stimuli were negative than when they were positive. This asymmetry in representation may stem from underlying differences in the activation functions for positive and negative hedonic information processing.

In this article, we present the rationale, development and preliminary evaluation of a novel set of materials to encourage and improve the consideration of users and their needs during the process of architectural design. Our focus is specifically on two areas: user-centred design principles and spatial cognition research. To this end, we developed two decks of flash-cards, termed the Architectural Strategies Cards (72 cards) and the Spatial Cognition Cards (111 cards). We conducted preliminary evaluations of the cards in the design studio and in design thinking workshops with multidisciplinary groups of students and with architectural practitioners. Our results suggest that the cards improve designers’ immersion into the perspective of building-users in a playful way and introduce scientific concepts effectively. In conclusion, we argue that serious-games and card-based methods should be part of the multiple approaches necessary to encourage and improve user-centred thinking, and integrate research findings into evidence-based design at large.

Almost all human outdoor activities is closely related to geographical position, thus the development of GIS is more rapidly. From the perspective of spatial information visualization, GIS is a digital description of objective geographical world. As abstract models of geographical environment, analog maps and 2D electronic maps have respective limitations in vivid representing spatial information. Simultaneously, the vast majority of HCI is limited to plane display and is difficult to users to integrate into it. Relation between outdoor AR (augmented reality) technology and spatial information visualization representation embodies in the common basic cognition and mobility. Emergence of outdoor AR and mobile GIS provides the combination of outdoor AR technology and spatial information visualization representation with powerful theoretical foundation and technical channel, which offers new ideas and new interface to spatial information visualization representation and is committed to enhance and expand user's spatial cognition by overlaying virtual geographic objects on real scene. The paper firstly analyzes its research status, feasibility of the combination, basic characteristics and structure. Secondly, it discusses existing technologic prototypes from application-driven perspective and puts forward a research framework and discusses four key technologies: display device, tracking and positioning, virtual-real combination and HCI. Furthermore, it propose core algorithms including a hybrid registration method based on GPS and 3D electronic compass, registration methods using affine representation and geographical objects modeling etc. Lastly, it expatiate the applications and significance.

Position-aware image captioning with spatial relation

Aiming at the indoor location and navigation problem of humanoid biped robot with complex motion structure, a humanoid biped robot localization and navigation system based on ORB-SLAM is designed. Firstly, the working principle of ORB-SLAM is analyzed, and it is improved to realize the function of missing map reading and generating dense point cloud map. Secondly, the dense point cloud map is converted to octomap, and then the conversion of 3D map to 2D map is completed. The SBPL planning library is improved to carry out the path planning of the robot, and the path planning based on the boundary exploration is realized. Finally, the experimental verification is carried out on the biped robot to verify the effectiveness of the location and navigation system design in the indoor environment.