Mental Maps

The term mental map refers to the cognitive representation of environmental information that a human being acquires through different (direct and indirect) sources. The term was first used by Edward Tolman in 1948 to refer to the mental representation of spatial layouts learned by rats to find food in a labyrinth. The term is synonymous with the terms cognitive map and spatial mental representation. The latter expression is a more neutral term offered in response to the criticism that the map metaphor is too restrictive and provides the incorrect impression that environmental information is indeed mentally stored in a maplike format. Nonetheless, the term mental or cognitive map is still widely used. The criticism and discussion of the map metaphor was particularly active in the second half of the 20th century, and alternative terms have been proposed, such as spatial schemata, cognitive collage, and world graph.

Mental maps are the result of a multimodal integration of various information sources. On the side of the cognitive agent, different sensory inputs contribute to the information that is stored about an environment. Visual information is the most prominent sensory channel, leading to abundant information about environments through direct experience. However, research has shown that environments are perceived and understood in diverse ways, not through visual perception alone. Besides other exteroceptive senses (i.e., senses that receive or respond to information from outside the body, e.g., smell, hearing, and balance), proprioceptive information (information about the internal state of the body) has been shown to contribute to understanding spatial environments. Proprioception and vestibular (balance) information, for example, play an important role in establishing an understanding of travelled distances and spatial environments, even in the absence of externally caused body movements such as those that occur when traveling by car or train. The multimodal origin of mental maps is supported further by the fact that they can be created in the complete absence of visual information by both sighted and visually impaired cognitive agents.

Mental maps are also created through the study of secondary sources. These sources can be in map format themselves, either as classic paper maps or digital tools, such as Google Earth (the most common Earth viewer), providing maplike information. Other secondary sources include texts (e.g., travel itineraries, movies) and verbal descriptions of spatial environments (e.g., route directions). In the latter case, the mostly qualitative verbal descriptions provide input for creating an often underspecified, sparse mental representation of a spatial environment that, when interacting with the environment, can guide spatial behavior.

Hence, it is important to bear in mind that mental representations of spatial environments are the result of a multimodal combination of sensory inputs and are not restricted to visual information alone. Furthermore, nonsensory sources such as maps, text, and verbal descriptions also contribute to the kind of information that is stored in a mental map.