Cognitive Aspects: How People Perceive, Memorize, Think and Talk About Landmarks - Landmarks: GIScience for Intelligent Services - page 41

of knowledge and beliefs about spatial properties of objects and events in the
world” [ 148 ] can be approached from a neuroscience perspective (which regions
in the brain, and which cell types, store and process spatial knowledge and are
active in the processing of visual or sensorimotor stimulations), from a psycho-
logical perspective (how do people behave in orientation and wayfinding tasks,
and what do their abilities reveal about cognitive capacities), from a linguistic
perspective (how people communicate (and hence think) about space), from an
anthropological perspective (for example, why Inuit are able to find home in their
monotonous environmen t 1 ) , from a philosophy of mind perspective (for example,
recognizing that landmarks form a graded category), and, last but not least, from
the perspective of artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence has two interests
in spatial cognitive science, aligned with what Searle has called strong AI and
weak AI [ 193 ] . One searches for computational models of human spatial cognitive
abilities (imitating human thinking), the other one searches for the spatially
intelligent machine, which is a machine able of interacting with humans on spatial
problem solving (simulating human thinking).
Spatial cognitive science supports strongly our position that landmarks are
embodied experiences that shape mental spatial representations. Montello states:
Cognition is about knowledge: its acquisition, storage and retrieval, manipulation, and use
by humans, non-human animals, and intelligent machines. Broadly construed, cognitive
systems include sensation and perception, thinking, imagery, memory, learning, language,
reasoning, and problem-solving. In humans, cognitive structures and processes are part of
the mind, which emerges from a brain and nervous system inside of a body that exists in
a social and physical world. Spatial properties include location, size, distance, direction,
separation and connection, shape, pattern, and movement ( [ 148 ] , p. 14771).
and continues, focusing on the interrelationship between embodied experience and
spatial cognition:
Humans acquire spatial knowledge and beliefs directly via sensorimotor systems that
operate as they move about the world. People also acquire spatial knowledge indirectly via
static and dynamic symbolic media such as maps and images, 3-D models, and language.
[...]Spatialknowledgechanges overtime,through processes of learning and development.
[...] A person's activity space—the set of paths, places, and regions traveled on a regular
basis—is an important example of spatial experience that influences people's knowledge of
space and place, no matter what their age. Most people know the areas around their homes
or work places most thoroughly, for example ( [ 148 ] , p. 14772).
Similarly, Varela et al. argue that cognition is embodied: “[We] emphasize the
growing conviction that cognition is not the representation of a pregiven world by
a pregiven mind but is rather the enactment of a world and a mind on the basis of
a history of the variety of actions that a being in the world performs” ([ 227 ] , p. 9),
a view that is shared also by others [ 113 ] .
1 Inuit demonstrate significantly higher levels of visual memory [ 101 ] .