Mental Maps

A mental map is psychological or internal representation of a place or places. The term arose during the psychological turn in human geography of the late 1960s as a key component of behavioral geography that concerned itself with addressing the role of environmental perception as a mediating factor between humans' actions and their environment. Mental maps were viewed as a tool, that is, a key to unlocking the connection between people's understanding of their environment and their spatial choices and behavior. [Page 300]This was an explicit attempt to explain human spatial activities by understanding them in terms of behavioral processes.

Mental map is one of many terms now known by the umbrella term cognitive mapping. The rationale for the study of mental maps is straightforward; our quality of life is greatly dependent on our ability to make informed spatial decisions through the processing and synthesis of spatial information, within a variety of situations, at differing scales. While attempting to navigate or explore an environment, we all have a spatial awareness of our surroundings, to varying extents. Through the varied stimulation of our senses, we come to know about places in the world. These sensory inputs emerge directly from the environment, where our senses engage in direct perception with objects that are close enough to touch, taste, smell, hear, and see. We can also learn geographic information from a multitude of less direct sources such as books, television, radio, newspapers, maps, models, and conversations.

Integrating these raw materials of experience and learning is a complex process. Mediating sensory inputs of environmental and spatial information are cognitive processes, attitudes, and beliefs. Through contemplation, sensory experience is transformed into knowing and understanding. The process that a mental map attempts to capture has become more widely known as cognitive mapping, commonly defined as a process composed of a series of psychological transformations by which an individual acquires, stores, recalls, and decodes information about the relative locations and attributes of the phenomena in his or her everyday spatial environment.