Cognitive Aspects: How People Perceive, Memorize, Think and Talk About Landmarks - Landmarks: GIScience for Intelligent Services - page 39

Chapter 3
Cognitive Aspects: How People Perceive,
Memorize, Think and Talk About Landmarks

Abstract This chapter deals with the human mind and its representation of
geographic space, particularly with the role of landmarks in these representations.
The scientific disciplines that are called upon to illuminate this area are neu-
roscience, cognitive science, and linguistics. This broad range of disciplines is
necessary, because the structure of spatial representations in the human brain and
the behaviour of these representations in spatial tasks are not directly accessible,
and thus, indirect approaches have to be pursued. Direct observations of brain cells
are invasive, and thus applied typically on animals only. To what extent observations
from animals can be transferred to explain human spatial cognition is a matter
for investigation in its own right. However, indirect methods such as functional
magnetic resonance imaging shed some light into brain activity. Cognitive scientists,
being interested in intelligence and behaviour rather than actual cell structures,
live with a similar challenge. They observe the human mind indirectly by devising
experiments on human memory, reasoning, and behaviour. Linguists add studies of
human spatial communication, which should also allow indirect conclusions about
mental representations.

3.1 Spatial Cognition

In his classic Frames of Reference [ 60 ] Gardner studied the specializations of
abilities in the human mind. Considering the very different talents of, say, the
religious scholar, the concert piano soloist, or the biomolecular scientist, it is clear
that a standardized test of general intelligence cannot do justice to the variety in
which human intelligence can take form. In order to be able to isolate specialized
'intelligences' Gardner set up criteria, namely that a specialization “must entail a
set of skills of problem-solving [...] and must also entail the potential for finding
or creating problems” (p. 64f.). He listed also additional evidence (“signs”) for
specializations, such as a potential isolation by brain damage, the existence of
exceptionally performing individuals, or an identified set of core operations.