Cognitive Aspects: How People Perceive, Memorize, Think and Talk About Landmarks - Landmarks: GIScience for Intelligent Services - page 42

Broader introductions to spatial cognition, both the spatial abilities as well as
the methods of studying these abilities, are provided in a number of topics, for
example [ 28 , 43 , 68 , 95 , 120 , 160 , 167 , 231 ] .

3.1.1 Spatial Abilities

Spatial cognition is the ability of living beings to perceive, memorize, utilize and
convey properties about their spatial environment. According to what we just have
said, we should rather speak of a combination of abilities. But factorizing these
abilities has been proven tricky. McGee, for example, identified an ability for
spatial visualization —the ability to mentally manipulate, rotate or twist objects—
and an ability for spatial orientation —the ability to imagine an object from different
perspectives [ 140 ] . These two abilities were already part of the broader Guilford-
Zimmerman aptitude survey ([ 73 ] , parts V and VI). Later, Carroll identified five
major spatial abilities, differently factorized, but in essence adding dynamic spatial
abilities of estimating speed and predicting movements [ 21 ] . While these abilities
could be identified and tested in paper-and-pencil tests, i.e., in small-scale space,
finding environmental spatial cognitive abilities such as wayfinding or learning the
layout of environments requires field experiments in environmental space [ 80 , 198 ] .
As environmental spatial abilities are also amalgams, Allen undertook an attempt
to break down the spatial abilities that service wayfinding [ 3 , 5 ] . He especially
distinguished between a family of abilities dedicated to object identification, object
localization and traveler orientation, and made finer distinctions within these
families depending on whether the objects are static or mobile, and whether the
observers are stationary or moving observers.
A recent review of spatial abilities and their individual performance measure-
ments has been provided by Hegarty and Waller [ 78 ] . Individual performance
variations in spatial abilities have triggered questions whether these abilities can
be strengthened by training, and whether they are gender dependent.

The issue of gender and spatial abilities is hotly debated in colloquial contexts,
but also in science. See for example Silverman and Eals' theory that sex differ-
ences exist and are grounded in evolutionary division of labor [ 199 ] , or Dabbs
et al. studying the frequently reported advantage of female in landmark-
based and egocentric orientation and male advantage in cardinal/Euclidean
orientation [ 34 ] . However, without going into detail here, across a large range
of contributions the reported research results are contradictory. More funda-
mentally, the underlying assumptions are questionable since experiments do
usually not distinguish between genetic disposition and socialization. With
the high plasticity of the brain it may even be impossible to resolve this latter
point in principle.